Zope Products newbie question.

[Lee Harr]

On 2004-07-22, mir nazim <mir4uu at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I am a PHP developer. i am currently studying Zope and want to migrate
> to it. I have developed a school management system in PHP. but now I
> want to implement it in Zope. I have worked through The Zope Book 2.6
> and Zope Developers Guide quickly(not thoroughly). My problem is that
> I am confused where to start.
>

>     System is supposed to admit students and assign unique ids to
> them. student object will be stored in ZODB. searching on id, first,
> mid and last names and possibly on other attributes like sex, date of
> birth etc has to be provided. system is to be used by end users and
> not zope administrators.
>
>     Now the problem is that I am confused how to implement these
> classes. Should I implement them as ZClass or in External methods or
> as a Zope Product. Please Clarify. Also tell me how, actually, am I
> supposed to start. small code sample can be a of great help. Links to
> similar free projects undertaken on zope can be useful.
>
> PS: Actually it is a small part of overall system which provides
> transport management, class/course management, exam/result management,
> employees payrolls and basic accounting for high schools. but to start
> with it should be enough to help me get a better feel of zope.
>


I have worked with Zope and Python quite a bit with databases.
My approach lately has been to use a relational database (postgres)
for the data and just provide interfaces with Zope (and most
recently with Twisted/ nevow).

For instance, if your data were in a database working with PHP
you could just write interface code and access the same database
with Zope.

If you are just getting started with Zope, you may want to look
at Zope 3, as I understand it is quite different from the current
Zope system.

I moved to nevow for my current project because I want to run
the entire system on Pentium I systems (database, web front-end,
and a curses front-end also) and Zope was too heavy. So far
nevow is working out very well.

Years ago (before finding python) I used PHP quite a bit also.
I remember trying to use an object oriented style and running
in to a lot of strange problems. When I saw Python, I said
"Oooh. Now I understand object oriented!" I read that the PHP
object system was majorly overhauled for PHP5, but I also
read that it is still not quite right. I should take a look
though and see for myself...