The Zope Application Server Revisited
Introducing Zope

Kevin Reichard
Friday, January 7, 2000 08:31:26 AM
One of the most noteworthy things about the open-source world is that no
good idea is ever wasted; if it doesn't succeed the first time around, it's
generally recycled through a few iterations until a wider audience is reached.
Such is the case with Python and Zope. Python has a devoted user base; while this
base may not be as large as the user base associated with Java or Perl or Tcl,
it's still significant enough to warrant serious consideration in discussions
of scripting and programming languages. That's because at its core there are a
lot of good ideas within Python about how data should be handled in an
object-oriented fashion.
These good ideas are given more exposure and a fuller development in
Zope, an open-source application server
developed by Digital Creations. Zope is
positioned in several different ways by its developers. First, Zope is
direct competition to application servers like
Cold Fusion and
SilverStream, which take
user-friendly queries from Web browsers via Java applications, submit them to
relational database, format the returned data, and then send the information
back to the Web browser. (This, of course, is a gross simplification of what an
application server does, but it gives you a general idea, nevertheless.)
Secondly, Zope is positioned as an open-source development system against the
likes of mod_perl and PHP. Finally, Zope is a content-management
system and portal manager, competing against Glyphica, Portera and Vignette.
In this review, we're evaluating Zope as an application
server. This isn't to say that the other two areas aren't worthy of
consideration, but the application-server market is exceptionally
competitive right now, and is one in which Linux solutions are still in short
supply despite the presence of Cold Fusion, Bluestone Sapphire/Web and IBM
WebSphere.
Next: Installing and Configuring Zope »