Zope Weekly News for December 15, 1999

Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 19:18:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Mike Pelletier mike@digicool.com
To: editors@linuxtoday.com

G’day,

Zope Weekly News is a digest of some of the useful and
interesting events which have occurred on the various Zope mailing
lists and the Zope.org site. It is published each Wednesday
evening.

Any opinions contained in the Zope Weekly News are those of the
chronicler exclusively.

Announcements

* Digital Creations announced that the next generation of its
Zope application server will leverage browser technology from the
Mozilla project.

http://www.digicool.com/News/mozilla

* Python.Org announced the Redesign Python.Org Contest. The
talented winner shall receive great fame and… erm… that’s it,
really. Have a try and have some fun.

http://www.python.org/Redesign.html

New Products

* “slef” has released an intriguing product called ZInstaller.
The objective is to enable Zope users to download and install new
Zope packages from the comfort of their web browser.

http://www.zope.org/Members/slef/ZInstaller

Updates

* Zope 2.1.1 has been released. This is a bug-fix release that
includes fixes for better handling of multiple-write conflicts,
undo-related problems and problems that prevented certain
third-party Zope products such as Squishdot from working. For more
information, see the file CHANGES.txt in the doc directory of the
distribution.

http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.1.1/

* “4am” released an update to his Python Methods product. The
present version is 0.1.7. Python Methods are, as the name implies,
methods written in Python, but which live in the object database
rather than on the filesystem.

http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/PythonMethod

* “Bill” reports that KnowledgeKit 1.6.7 has been released:

“This is a minor feature upgrade. Per request, there is now a
simple How-To object integrated into the KnowledgeBase portfolio.
While not yet as cool as cool as Zope.org’s, it is usable.”

http://www.zope.org/Members/Bill/Products/KnowledgeKit

* Another alpha release of XML Document is out. This release
fixes a number of bugs thanks to patches form diligent Zope users
and added a few minor features.

http://www.zope.org/Products/XMLDocument

* “anthony” has submitted “yet another minor release of
SQLSession”.

http://www.zope.org/Members/anthony/software/SQLSession/

* Jim Washington updated his ZRTChat product. ZRTChat provides
real-time chat with an entirely HTML interface. (No java,
javascript, etc.) The present version is 0.2.0.

http://www.zope.org/Members/jwashin/ZRTChat

* Pavlos Christoforou has released version 0.2.0 of FSSession.
FSSession manages session data (that is, per-browser data) and
stores it on the filesystem. (Compare with SQLSession.)

http://www.zope.org/Members/gaaros/FSSession

Zope.org items

* “Duncan” submitted a How-to entitled “Session data stored in
URL”:

“This how-to describes how to use Anthony Baxter’s SQLSession
product in conjunction with 4am’s SiteAccess product to store a
session id in the URL without the need to set any cookies.”

http://www.zope.org/Members/Duncan/SessionURLs

* “Bill” posted a new How-To: “How to delete a catlogAware
object that is no longer catalogued”.

http://www.zope.org/Members/Bill/Documentation/CatalogBadness

Notable Discussions

* There is a very informative thread with the subject “Zope
stability”. Michel explains how to use Zope’s debugger and a number
of techniques for developing in safe sandboxes and synching with a
production server are discussed.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015181.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015209.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015214.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015240.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015245.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015267.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015296.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015301.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015351.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015389.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015427.html

* Michael A. Alderete kicked off a thread called “Zope
Performance Methodology?”. He outlines in good detail what would be
needed to produce a document about optimising Zope’s performance.
He goes into everything from the underlying platform to Zope tuning
parameters to optimal coding practices. Numerous people write in to
fill in his blanks.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015254.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015270.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015270.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015278.html

* Brian Lloyd discusses the future of Zope in “Zope direction
and 2.2 roadmap”.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015297.html

* The ZODB and Zope objects are explored in “Philosophical
question – Zope Objects vs Entities in a RDBMS”. Questions raised
(and answered): How well does the ZODB scale? How does the ZODB
compare to traditional RDBMS for efficiency? Can I tread ZClass
objects like normal Python objects? What limitations does Linux’s
filesystem impose, and how can I get around them? How can I make
SQL results act like ‘real’ objects?

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015299.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015300.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015359.html

* Timothy Wilson asks if anyone has written an application such
as a technical support department might use to track issues. A
couple leads are given.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015317.html

* “reality check” — Occasionally becoming a religious debate,
Jonothan Farr sparked off a mailstrom with forwarded comments on
Zope’s lack of documentation. Opposing lines are quickly drawn:
Zope has the worst documentation known to mankind vs. Zope’s
documentation is pretty good, really. Zope is too hard vs. Zope is
pretty easy, application servers are just complex. Zope needs to
appeal to a wider audience vs. That’s what FrontPage is for.

Amongst the lively expressions of opinions, some attempt to
advance the documentation cause. Members of the ZDP remind everyone
that they are busily working away, and would you like to lend a
hand? Also, the next generation of Zope documentation is briefly
described.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015393.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015445.html

* Bruce Perens’s Zope server was on the receiving end of a
multiple slashdotting. He reports that it came through with flying
colours.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-December/015506.html

—
Mike Pelletier.