[rescue] good price for a RaQ ?

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, Oct 10, 2002 at 07:03:02PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:

>   You know, I've seen a fair amount of info on zope...but nowhere, 
> no-how, have I ever been able to get a good description of what it 
> actually *does*.

Well, in part the confusion is caused because it does lots of things.

First, it is a programming language (python).  Second, it is an object
oriented database (ZDB, I believe it is called.  The DB is available
seperately for people who want a python OODB, but not the full zope.  I
could be wrong about the ZDB name, but I certainly don't mean Zope-DB
which is an ODBC like thing for Zope).  Now, make it easy to store the
programming language in the DB.  Think vaguely along the lines of
being inside a Java program, being able to type in a new class
definition, and have it compile that, instantiate it so that it can use
it right away, and save it to the database so that it can both the code
and the data are persisted.

This is basically the core of what Zope is to my understanding.  This is
somewhat similar to a smalltalk system and its image, or a common lisp
system and it's image.  Now, on top of this programming/database system,
add a web server, a preprocessing system to let you combine the
programming language and HTML together, an XML-RPC server, a SOAP
server, and lots of bundled web applications written in the system, and
you will have what Zope actually is.  At least, to my understanding.

Basically, to me, Zope seems like Squeak, minus the graphical front end,
substituting python for smalltalk, and with the bundled web stuff turned
on by default rather than off by default.

But, I believe that Patrick has more practical experience with it than I
do. 

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd