RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-16 Thread Geoffrey Talvola
Chuck Esterbrook wrote:
 On Thursday 12 June 2003 06:16 am, Geoffrey Talvola wrote:
 This has bitten some people on this mailing list in the past because
 of bugs in database adapters.  And right now I'm trying to track down
 a problem where I have a servlet that makes an HTTPS request to
 another web site (using Python's built-in SSL support), and it looks
 like every once in a while, something happens during that outgoing
 HTTPS request that crashes the app server.  It only happens like once
 a week, so I haven't had any luck tracking this down.  If Webware
 used some sort of process pool instead of a thread pool, and served
 only one request per process, this wouldn't be as much of a problem.
 
 Could you factor this out to another WebKit instance which you would
 hit with Pickle-RPC or XML-RPC from the main one? Then when your
 HTTPS code crashed, your main app server would be intact.
 
 I realize that solution isn't on a silver platter, but then setting up
 and calling RPC services with WebKit *is* fairly straightforward.

Even easier, I'll probably just use stunnel to handle the encryption if this
continues to happen.

- Geoff


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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-15 Thread Chuck Esterbrook
On Thursday 12 June 2003 06:16 am, Geoffrey Talvola wrote:
 This has bitten some people on this mailing list in the past because
 of bugs in database adapters.  And right now I'm trying to track down
 a problem where I have a servlet that makes an HTTPS request to
 another web site (using Python's built-in SSL support), and it looks
 like every once in a while, something happens during that outgoing
 HTTPS request that crashes the app server.  It only happens like once
 a week, so I haven't had any luck tracking this down.  If Webware
 used some sort of process pool instead of a thread pool, and served
 only one request per process, this wouldn't be as much of a problem.

Could you factor this out to another WebKit instance which you would hit 
with Pickle-RPC or XML-RPC from the main one? Then when your HTTPS code 
crashed, your main app server would be intact.

I realize that solution isn't on a silver platter, but then setting up 
and calling RPC services with WebKit *is* fairly straightforward.

-- 
Chuck
http://ChuckEsterbrook.com



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RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-13 Thread paul.boddie
Ian Bicking [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 I would also like to see a standard container.  I don't think it even
 has to be terribly intrusive or conformist -- it just has to create
 request and response objects, and map those to some resource, which
 would be somewhat more abstract than servlets.

My private experiments suggest that it isn't that hard to make an abstraction layer 
for Webware and mod_python - in these cases, the main differences are where one finds 
certain facilities (eg. request and response streams, content type and encoding 
information) and whether those facilities are implemented by separate objects or not. 
Providing an environment for a Webware-style plug-in (which takes responsibility for 
certain resource types) within mod_python isn't an insurmountable problem either, and 
I'm convinced that there's enough common ground in Twisted and Zope to cover those 
frameworks as well. Under the covers, in Zope Products, Zope isn't so different after 
all.

 I was trying to pursue this kind of unification after PyCon, but I'm
 afraid I lost momentum, and actually writing code is much more
 satisfying than trying to organize stuff.  I'd still like to pursue it,
 though.

The shootout paper was certainly very interesting, and recent coverage of Twisted 
Web suggests that it wouldn't be absolutely necessary to put the whole of Webware on 
top of Twisted to get a decent application environment with a different execution 
model:

  http://twistedmatrix.com/users/nafai/pycon-paper/tw_deploy-01.html

That would be compelling: a common environment which runs on servers with completely 
different underlying scalability models (threads, processes, asynchronous tasks) - I 
doubt that there's such diversity between the mainstream Java application servers.

 I've been working on a component idea, for adding functionality to
 servlets -- a bit finer grained than plugins.  It's in the Webware
 sandbox (webware-sandbox.sf.net), in ianbicking/Component, with a user
 authentication component as an example.  I've also used it for (my still
 in heavy development) form processing toolkit, in FormEncode, also in
 the Sandbox.

Perhaps I should get around to looking at this as well.

Paul


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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread Frank Barknecht
Hallo,
Chris Bruce hat gesagt: // Chris Bruce wrote:

 Thanks for the info.  If you have any additional suggestions or comments,
 please let me know.
 
 As far as security, is UserKit useable?

I found that the file(pickle)-based UserManager just doesn't work (for
me). The MiddleKit backend reportedly is in use and works just fine,
but as I don't use MK, I could not use UserKit without writing my own
backend.

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht   _ __footils.org__


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RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread paul.boddie
Geoffrey Talvola [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 If Webware used some sort of process pool instead of a
 thread pool, and served only one request per process, this 
 wouldn't be as much of a problem.

It could be interesting to investigate the tantalising, but still apparently obscure, 
POSH (poshmodule.sf.net) mechanism for sharing data between processes in an apparently 
thread-like fashion. Sadly, I don't have the time (or mandate) to look into that, 
but it could address the various scalability and reliability complaints that have come 
up, at least if it didn't disrupt the programming model employed by most Webware 
applications too much.

On a more mundane level, I should really send some patches in around classic CGI 
environment variables, and possibly around URLs and paths, although I imagine that Ian 
Bicking's work probably conflicts with the latter somewhat.

Paul


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RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread paul.boddie
Hancock, David (DHANCOCK) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 It seems to me that adopting a process-based architecture would reduce
 performance considerably, but maybe there's some middle ground using FastCGI
 or mod_python.

I suppose I should have said process pooling rather than process-oriented, because 
people do tend to think of CGI or intensive process creation/destruction when 
processes are mentioned.

 My main concern about mod_python (and mod_perl, which I have
 more experience with) is that they bloat up httpd processes considerably.  I
 haven't used either with Apache 2.0 in its threaded mode, so I don't know if
 it's an issue there or not.

I haven't looked *that* deeply into mod_python, but I have also heard scary things 
about mod_perl. As for the thread vs. process situation, it seems to me that the main 
benefit of using threads is the reduced overhead in inter-thread communication and 
access to shared data, but I'm not entirely convinced that this is always going to be 
a dominant factor in Web applications. Any comments on that?

Paul


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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread Chris Bruce
I think the process issue lies within the Webware application server, and
not the connection from Apache to Webware.

- Original Message - 
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 7:17 AM
Subject: RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)


 Hancock, David (DHANCOCK) [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  It seems to me that adopting a process-based architecture would reduce
  performance considerably, but maybe there's some middle ground using
FastCGI
  or mod_python.

 I suppose I should have said process pooling rather than
process-oriented, because people do tend to think of CGI or intensive
process creation/destruction when processes are mentioned.

  My main concern about mod_python (and mod_perl, which I have
  more experience with) is that they bloat up httpd processes
considerably.  I
  haven't used either with Apache 2.0 in its threaded mode, so I don't
know if
  it's an issue there or not.

 I haven't looked *that* deeply into mod_python, but I have also heard
scary things about mod_perl. As for the thread vs. process situation, it
seems to me that the main benefit of using threads is the reduced overhead
in inter-thread communication and access to shared data, but I'm not
entirely convinced that this is always going to be a dominant factor in Web
applications. Any comments on that?

 Paul


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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread Aaron Held
I like webware becuase you can write all of the business logic as 
normal python modules, test them outsite of a webserver w/ full 
debugging, and then call it from a very small servlet.  I hate debuggin 
in a web server.

Here is an example of how I use Webware.

I need to pull data from Quickbase.com - a web based database ASP type 
service.
1)  Created a generic QBClient module in python that interacts w/ Quickbase
--- All coding done w/o webware at all

2)  Create a servlet with this method:
   def prepareReport(self):
   qb = QBClient()
   qb.userName = 'This is not my qbusername'
   qb.passwd = 'This is not my passwd'
   qb.database = 'this is not my database'
   ctable = qb.getCVSTable() -- return CVS data
   csvdata = ASV.ASV() ASB is a module to parse CVS data
   
csvdata.set_field_names(['Name','Products','Alt1','Alt2','Alt3','Alt4','Alt5'])
   csvdata.input(ctable,ASV.CSV())
   csvdata.data.pop(0)  - the top row is header info, lose that
   self.records = csvdata
3) create a PSP file that uses self.records
%def writeTableRecord(row):%
   tr
   TD class=reportSectionCell align=left 
style=text-align:left;b%= row['Name']%
   TD class=reportSectionCell align=left 
style=text-align:left;b%= row['Products']%
   /tr
% end %

on the other hand if you are building a pretty standard website Zope is 
much easier.  I build a large website and support site in Zope and it 
was very easy to build up a FAQ and knowledge base.  Of course when I 
had to integrate that Knowbase into a MsSQL database things got 
interesting.

-Aaron

Chris Bruce wrote:

I truly believe that Python is probably the best web development language
around.  I have actually been paid to develop with Java, ASP, PHP, and Perl
and none of them are the silver bullet, like python appears to be.  But, I
am now trying to find a great framework to use on all future apps done in
Python.
I am getting ready to build a large webbased application.  I am set on
python (still wondering how to make installation easy) and am deciding
between Zope and Webware.  I have developed many Zope applications, but new
to Webware.  I am well aware that they are very different and they can't
truly be compared.  But many things I have read about Webware always mention
Non of the Headaches of Zope or something similar.  What is meant by this?
Can you guys offer some objective information for/against Zope/Webware in
general.  My application is basically a website in a box designed for the
needs of a specific industry..
I am not looking to start a debate or anything, just trying to get some
fresh points of view.  Some of the reasons why I am looking at Webware:
MiddleKit
mod_webkit
I have had weird ZODB issues in the past.
Maximum use of Python
Features about Zope I like:
Webbased access to development and whole system
Built in Security (no coding)
Super fast to develop and deploy apps
Virtual Host Support
Thanks,

Chris



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RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread Ian Bicking
On Thu, 2003-06-12 at 04:49, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Ian Bicking [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
  
  Well, I'm not exactly objective, but then while Webware is my
  preference, Zope is my current reality in professional programming.
 
 You're relatively lucky, then. The closest to job-related Web
 applications I get these days involves vanilla J2EE technologies.

Yeah, I'm not complaining.  I must admit I'm still subtley suggesting
changes which may include Webware (knock on wood).

  Also, because Webware doesn't publish everything, you can use Python
  modules and objects that aren't Zope-aware.  Zope makes this really hard
  -- like, for some reason a Postgres connection is returning an
  mxDateTime (un-Zope-aware) object periodically, instead of a Zope
  DateTime object.  Trying to access the .year attribute, I get a not
  authorized error.  That's just stupid.
 
 I had a small demo application working in Zope 2.5 (I think) and upon
 upgrading to Zope 2.6 it stopped working for exactly the reasons
 described. My reaction: WTF?! Moreover, this all seemed so obvious
 to those already familiar with Zope that it took a while before I
 found the magic words to unbreak my application in some documentation
 or mailing list archive or other. It wasn't as if the offending
 objects were doing anything unreasonable - they were just simple data
 containers.

Yeah, basic OO methodology is *really hard* in Zope.  I think that's
what drives me crazy, and it comes back to the security stuff.  But the
result is that it's too easy to create bad applications in Zope, and too
painful to create good applications.  That problem exists everywhere --
procedural code is easier to bang through -- but Zope goes too far.

The heavy app server also makes upgrading and such difficult.  It seems
common to run several discrete applications on a single Zope server,
which seems like a bad idea to me -- development versions living
alongside production versions, having to upgrade things en masse, and
then testing that big heap of code... bad stuff.

  For deployment, Webware is much lighter than Zope (and not just
  CPU-wise), and I think that makes deployment easier.  But you won't find
  things prepackaged, or many hosts that specifically support Webware, so
  you do have to do deployment on your own.  But it's not hard, and you
  get to use file-based tools.
 
 One thing that has reportedly been problematic with Zope and Webware
 is the choice of threads for distributing work and the scalability
 issues that this brings with it. Having said that, the threaded
 paradigm is probably so entrenched in the average Webware application
 (or in power-user applications, at least) that I can't see a
 process-oriented variant of Webware any time soon.

While it wouldn't be that hard to port the basic Webware infrastructure
to a process model, I also think that Webware *is* threads, at least at
this point -- it's a framework, and threads are implicitly a part of
that framework.

That said, most use of threads could probably be abstracted fairly
easily -- it's mostly just data sharing, and while that's easy with
threads it's still not entirely trivial (at least if you handle
concurrency).  Perhaps abstractions are possible that would make
something like POSH a drop-in replacement.

Personally I don't buy the scalability arguments for processes -- they
are based on theory, not practice -- but I definitely do appreciate the
reliability issues.

Of course, then there's the problem that processes work very badly on
Windows... but again, with the right abstractions.

  Ian




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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread Chris Bruce
I am not to worried about process vs threads right now.

My only concern is rolling my own security and stuff like that.  I like
how Zope's security allows you to use different acl_users folder that
supports different authorizations--although I want groups.  But on the
flip-side, one of the reasons I am reluctant about Zope is that anything I
do will only work in Zope.  It is not very useable outside Zope.

This is the one drawback about developing with python for web-apps compared
to Java right now.  There are no real standards for developing/deploying
python web-apps and it almost always depends on what python app
server/apache mod that you use.  I hate the fact that the Java community has
all these crazy best practices for developing web apps,  however some
things are kinda cool about the servlet containers when it comes to standard
ways of defining security and uri mapping.  The idea is really nice that you
can take a java .war file (web archive) and drop it into most any java app
server and it is ready to go.  Then the admin can just modify some xml
files.

I am not sure if it is good or bad to have some kind of standard
container?  I wish developing python web-apps could run on most any python
app server. But after spending many years developing java apps, I can say
for sure that java is really dissappointing for developing web apps.  But, I
think Webware has some great potential with plug-ins.  I just wish there
were more of them!  But that might be the way to go right now,  developing
the Zope-like things that make it easy to build web-apps in Zope as plug-ins
for Webware.


Chris



- Original Message - 
From: Ian Bicking
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Webware discuss
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 10:53 AM
Subject: RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)


On Thu, 2003-06-12 at 04:49, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Ian Bicking [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
  Well, I'm not exactly objective, but then while Webware is my
  preference, Zope is my current reality in professional programming.

 You're relatively lucky, then. The closest to job-related Web
 applications I get these days involves vanilla J2EE technologies.

Yeah, I'm not complaining.  I must admit I'm still subtley suggesting
changes which may include Webware (knock on wood).

  Also, because Webware doesn't publish everything, you can use Python
  modules and objects that aren't Zope-aware.  Zope makes this really hard
  -- like, for some reason a Postgres connection is returning an
  mxDateTime (un-Zope-aware) object periodically, instead of a Zope
  DateTime object.  Trying to access the .year attribute, I get a not
  authorized error.  That's just stupid.

 I had a small demo application working in Zope 2.5 (I think) and upon
 upgrading to Zope 2.6 it stopped working for exactly the reasons
 described. My reaction: WTF?! Moreover, this all seemed so obvious
 to those already familiar with Zope that it took a while before I
 found the magic words to unbreak my application in some documentation
 or mailing list archive or other. It wasn't as if the offending
 objects were doing anything unreasonable - they were just simple data
 containers.

Yeah, basic OO methodology is *really hard* in Zope.  I think that's
what drives me crazy, and it comes back to the security stuff.  But the
result is that it's too easy to create bad applications in Zope, and too
painful to create good applications.  That problem exists everywhere --
procedural code is easier to bang through -- but Zope goes too far.

The heavy app server also makes upgrading and such difficult.  It seems
common to run several discrete applications on a single Zope server,
which seems like a bad idea to me -- development versions living
alongside production versions, having to upgrade things en masse, and
then testing that big heap of code... bad stuff.

  For deployment, Webware is much lighter than Zope (and not just
  CPU-wise), and I think that makes deployment easier.  But you won't find
  things prepackaged, or many hosts that specifically support Webware, so
  you do have to do deployment on your own.  But it's not hard, and you
  get to use file-based tools.

 One thing that has reportedly been problematic with Zope and Webware
 is the choice of threads for distributing work and the scalability
 issues that this brings with it. Having said that, the threaded
 paradigm is probably so entrenched in the average Webware application
 (or in power-user applications, at least) that I can't see a
 process-oriented variant of Webware any time soon.

While it wouldn't be that hard to port the basic Webware infrastructure
to a process model, I also think that Webware *is* threads, at least at
this point -- it's a framework, and threads are implicitly a part of
that framework.

That said, most use of threads could probably be abstracted fairly
easily -- it's mostly just data sharing, and while that's easy with
threads it's still not entirely trivial (at least if you

Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread Tracy S . Ruggles
On Thursday, June 12, 2003, at 12:53 PM, Ian Bicking wrote:

Also, because Webware doesn't publish everything, you can use Python
modules and objects that aren't Zope-aware.  Zope makes this really 
hard
-- like, for some reason a Postgres connection is returning an
mxDateTime (un-Zope-aware) object periodically, instead of a Zope
DateTime object.  Trying to access the .year attribute, I get a not
authorized error.  That's just stupid.
I had a small demo application working in Zope 2.5 (I think) and upon
upgrading to Zope 2.6 it stopped working for exactly the reasons
described. My reaction: WTF?! Moreover, this all seemed so obvious
to those already familiar with Zope that it took a while before I
found the magic words to unbreak my application in some documentation
or mailing list archive or other. It wasn't as if the offending
objects were doing anything unreasonable - they were just simple data
containers.
Yeah, basic OO methodology is *really hard* in Zope.  I think that's
what drives me crazy, and it comes back to the security stuff.  But the
result is that it's too easy to create bad applications in Zope, and 
too
painful to create good applications.  That problem exists everywhere --
procedural code is easier to bang through -- but Zope goes too far.
All I can say is that Zope hurt my brain when I tried to use it.

If application servers were gloves, Zope would be a huge mangling metal 
monstrosity that latches around your ligaments, compromises the 
integrity of your bone structure, denudes you of subtle sensations and 
basically atrophies the muscular system of an otherwise healthy hand.  
While Webware, on the other hand, is like smooth satin joy.  You can 
still do everything you could do before, but it's much more fun because 
it feels so good!

--T



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RE: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-12 Thread Thomas Dennehy
Ian writes:

 Personally I detest XML files -- the beauty of OO is when data is not
 exposed, just methods, and XML exposes data in an inflexible way. But
 the interchangeability would be great.

At Autodesk, we had an object-oriented approach to XML for the
Streamline engineering collaboration service. We had class libraries in
both C++ and Java for client code (web apps, server apps, and publishing
apps), who used objects rather than XML text. XML was used to persist
CAD data in packages, crack open packages to populate databases, and
stream structured metadata from databases to web clients. It is very
much like C# uses attributes to serialize objects in XML, but we had a
finer degree of control. The wrong XML definition was shown to balloon
text size to an unacceptable degree pretty quickly.

More recently, I used Webware/Python to prototype an online catalog for
a local not-for-profit institute serving the visually-impaired. The
catalog was defined in XML. (No formal schema, just me inventing a
syntax. The initial catalog has 90-100 entries, enough to give me a warm
feeling that the XML has pretty good coverage.) One of the goals for the
site design was to be able to maintain the web presentation separately
from the catalog content. The website look and feel would not change
often, but products would be added or deleted from the catalog on an
ongoing basis, prices would change, etc.

[It should be noted that the online catalog and site are designed only
for presentation, and not to support direct purchase at this time.]

I got two things from python:

1) A nice class hierarchy for the web page types (welcome, show items in
a given category, show search-by-keyword results, show specific item)
along with a parallel class hierarchy for the XML filters needed to
support them.

2) Good built-in support for SAX parsing, without validation.

Given that, what I got from Webware was a straightforward and repeatable
organization for the WriteContent method on my python server pages:

# parse values from the HTTP request, if any,

...

# Read the catalog and render the page, for example
#
base = os.path.dirname(self.request().serverSidePath())
pp = GoreySearchPage(self, base, 'Gorey.xml', ...)
pp.read()
pp.render()

The read() method parses the XML file, pulling out the juicy bits. The
render() method writes the HTML response. Granted, the python statements
to crank out the HTML response were tedious to write, but there is a lot
of common content across the page types, which was well-supported by the
class hierarchy. I was able to get a feature-rich site running in about
a week, with no previous Webware experience and somewhat rusty python
skills, and to extend the functionality easily a couple times already.

On the XML side, the catalog file worked as I intended it to. Changes
were automatically reflected in the website, even if the change added or
removed a product category, changed the number of pages occupied by a
category, or added/removed an entry from a keyword search result on
screen. (An aside: pagination is very important when delivering data to
the visually-impaired, some of whom might be using a text-to-speech
system to READ webpages to them, others who might be using very large
type. As a sighted user, I tend to want many results on a page. But I
have also experienced the tedium of the mechanical voice droning on and
on. We are experimenting with various strategies for separately
formatting content to suit users with various classes of visual
impairment.)

So Webware seemed to be the right venue for getting a proof-of-concept
done in a short amount of time, while still having an understandable and
extensible design. It remains to be seen whether we will go live with
that architecture.


Tom Dennehy
Private Citizen
Bloomfield Hills MI






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[Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-11 Thread Chris Bruce
I truly believe that Python is probably the best web development language
around.  I have actually been paid to develop with Java, ASP, PHP, and Perl
and none of them are the silver bullet, like python appears to be.  But, I
am now trying to find a great framework to use on all future apps done in
Python.

I am getting ready to build a large webbased application.  I am set on
python (still wondering how to make installation easy) and am deciding
between Zope and Webware.  I have developed many Zope applications, but new
to Webware.  I am well aware that they are very different and they can't
truly be compared.  But many things I have read about Webware always mention
Non of the Headaches of Zope or something similar.  What is meant by this?

Can you guys offer some objective information for/against Zope/Webware in
general.  My application is basically a website in a box designed for the
needs of a specific industry..

I am not looking to start a debate or anything, just trying to get some
fresh points of view.  Some of the reasons why I am looking at Webware:
MiddleKit
mod_webkit
I have had weird ZODB issues in the past.
Maximum use of Python

Features about Zope I like:
Webbased access to development and whole system
Built in Security (no coding)
Super fast to develop and deploy apps
Virtual Host Support


Thanks,

Chris



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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-11 Thread Frank Barknecht
Hallo,
Chris Bruce hat gesagt: // Chris Bruce wrote:

 I am getting ready to build a large webbased application.  I am set
 on python (still wondering how to make installation easy) and am
 deciding between Zope and Webware.  I have developed many Zope
 applications, but new to Webware.  

Why not just develop some Webware apps?! It's really easy for someone
already familiar with Python and HTML/HTTP. I'm sure, this is the best
way to get a feeling for Webware.

 But many things I have read about Webware always mention Non of the
 Headaches of Zope or something similar.  What is meant by this?

I guess, it's the thinness of Webware. WW is pro-Python, which
means, that everything you do is more than less directly done in
Python. No DHTML, no (or only little) web-based configuration. This -
at least IMO - is one of the strong points in Webware: it doesn't put
anything between the application developer and Python.

 Can you guys offer some objective information for/against Zope/Webware in
 general.  My application is basically a website in a box designed for the
 needs of a specific industry..

I always had problems really understanding Zope. A lot of the docs
look like MS-Word manuals describing which menus to open: Go to
Options-Preferences, click the radio box labeled 'spam' and so on. I
didn't like that. I like the Webware-way: Write a class called
'SitePage' that inherits from 'Page'...

 I am not looking to start a debate or anything, just trying to get some
 fresh points of view.  Some of the reasons why I am looking at Webware:
 MiddleKit

sqlobject.org would be an alternative.

 Features about Zope I like:
 Webbased access to development and whole system

That you would have to develop in Webware yourself first.

 Built in Security (no coding)

A non-decided issue in Webware. Currently everyone has his/her own
security system.

 Virtual Host Support

Here you'd need to use your webserver's capabilities with WW.

ciao
-- 
 Frank Barknecht   _ __footils.org__


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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-11 Thread Gary Perez
Hi, Chris.

I muddle my way through both Zope and Webware almost daily. I'm neither 
a novice nor an expert with either.

With mod_webkit, you get to take advantage of Apache's built-in 
functionality. If mod_ssl is installed/configured, then secure stuff 
dynamically generated through webkit is a given. Trying to get Zope and 
SSL to play nicely is a far cry from easy. Plus, someone's going to 
have to admin the Apache server anyway (incl. vhosting), so why not 
keep things simple?

Webware is knowing Python and some HTML, even CSS if you like. You 
don't have to learn yet another markup language or worry about crazy or 
non-intuitive syntax (e.g. dtml-call dict.update({'a': 'b'}). You'll 
write fewer lines of code using Webware since you don't have to worry 
about closing DTML tags, which can also cause some headaches if you're 
deeply nesting things.

Also, whether you shove data into a database or use pickles in the 
filesystem (not recommended for concurrency reasons), that information 
is available system-wide. MiddleKit looks promising and works, though I 
haven't gotten it to work 100% with MySQL yet (missing a req'd module, 
too much other stuff to do). Getting stuff out of the ZODB, as far as I 
know, isn't easy or intuitive.

In Zope, I find myself writing a lot of External Methods to do the 
'heavy lifting', and call them from within the DTML. In WebKit, the 
'heavy lifting' is just part of the Python, not a requisite separate 
entity.

Wherever I'm not *required* to use Zope, I don't even think about it... 
I go straight to Webware/WebKit.

On Wednesday, June 11, 2003, at 02:25 PM, Chris Bruce wrote:

I truly believe that Python is probably the best web development 
language
around.  I have actually been paid to develop with Java, ASP, PHP, and 
Perl
and none of them are the silver bullet, like python appears to be.  
But, I
am now trying to find a great framework to use on all future apps done 
in
Python.

I am getting ready to build a large webbased application.  I am set on
python (still wondering how to make installation easy) and am deciding
between Zope and Webware.  I have developed many Zope applications, 
but new
to Webware.  I am well aware that they are very different and they 
can't
truly be compared.  But many things I have read about Webware always 
mention
Non of the Headaches of Zope or something similar.  What is meant by 
this?

Can you guys offer some objective information for/against Zope/Webware 
in
general.  My application is basically a website in a box designed 
for the
needs of a specific industry..

I am not looking to start a debate or anything, just trying to get some
fresh points of view.  Some of the reasons why I am looking at Webware:
MiddleKit
mod_webkit
I have had weird ZODB issues in the past.
Maximum use of Python
Features about Zope I like:
Webbased access to development and whole system
Built in Security (no coding)
Super fast to develop and deploy apps
Virtual Host Support
Thanks,

Chris


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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-11 Thread Chris Bruce
Thanks for the info.  If you have any additional suggestions or comments,
please let me know.

As far as security, is UserKit useable?


Chris

- Original Message - 
From: Chris Bruce
To: Webware discuss
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2003 11:25 AM
Subject: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)


I truly believe that Python is probably the best web development language
around.  I have actually been paid to develop with Java, ASP, PHP, and Perl
and none of them are the silver bullet, like python appears to be.  But, I
am now trying to find a great framework to use on all future apps done in
Python.

I am getting ready to build a large webbased application.  I am set on
python (still wondering how to make installation easy) and am deciding
between Zope and Webware.  I have developed many Zope applications, but new
to Webware.  I am well aware that they are very different and they can't
truly be compared.  But many things I have read about Webware always mention
Non of the Headaches of Zope or something similar.  What is meant by this?

Can you guys offer some objective information for/against Zope/Webware in
general.  My application is basically a website in a box designed for the
needs of a specific industry..

I am not looking to start a debate or anything, just trying to get some
fresh points of view.  Some of the reasons why I am looking at Webware:
MiddleKit
mod_webkit
I have had weird ZODB issues in the past.
Maximum use of Python

Features about Zope I like:
Webbased access to development and whole system
Built in Security (no coding)
Super fast to develop and deploy apps
Virtual Host Support


Thanks,

Chris



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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-11 Thread Ian Bicking
On Wed, 2003-06-11 at 16:29, Chris Bruce wrote:
 As far as security, is UserKit useable?

My experience, shared by a number of other people, is that UserKit
doesn't help with the interesting problems (like security,
authentication, etc), and isn't worth it for the conceptual overhead.  I
read the term Ravioli Code recently, which described it well.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/wiki?RavioliCode





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Re: [Webware-discuss] Zope vs Webware (Not Really)

2003-06-11 Thread Roger Haase

--- Chris Bruce [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 
 I am getting ready to build a large webbased application.  I am set
 on
 python (still wondering how to make installation easy) and am
 deciding
 between Zope and Webware.  I have developed many Zope applications,
 but new
 to Webware.  I am well aware that they are very different and they
 can't
 truly be compared.  But many things I have read about Webware always
 mention
 Non of the Headaches of Zope or something similar.  What is meant
 by this?


If it really is an I project and not a we project, I don't think
Zope has much to offer you. I tried a while back, but never managed to
do anything useful with Zope. To me, Zope seems only appropriate for a
large team of developers. The learning curve is pretty steep for one
person to climb without someone elses shoulders to stand on now and
then.

Roger Haase

__
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Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


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