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Guide for Corporate Decision Makers

A work in progress to collect the reasons why companies SHOULD adopt Zope

1. Open Source Software

Zope is an Open Source Application Server. So Zope and its source code are freely available, and you get assurance that the product development will not stop in the future and that it will keep progressing as more and more people get involved in the development process.

For a complete view of the benefits of using Open Source software, read the IDC Bulletin of September 10, 1999, co-authored by Hadar Pedhazur, founder of Opticality Ventures and board chairman of Zope Corporation, the company developing Zope.

Zope Corporation, formerly known as Digital Creations, is a leading provider of Open Source web application services based on Zope.

2. Investors think the Zope services model is a good idea

On November 13, 2000, Zope Corporation have closed a $12 million C round funding with a major investor, Whitney & Co., and other strategic investors, including Intel 64 Fund and Opticality Ventures. See the press release here.

3. Cross-Platform

Zope works on the various Linux/Unix options, on Windows, BeOS, and on Mac OS X.

4. Python

Zope is written in Python, one of the most powerfull scripting languages, with some components written in C for performance optimization. Another good news is that the Python core development team is part of Digital Creations' staff. So Python contributes to Zope as Zope contributes to Python from the inside. Furthermore Zope can benefit from the participation of more developers from the Python community.

5. Open Standards Support

Zope supports Internet standards including SQL, ODBC, XML, DOM, FTP, HTTP, XML-RPC, SOAP, and more.

6. Interoperable with third party HTTP servers

Zope can be interfaced with your HTTP server of choice : Apache, Microsoft IIS, Netscape Enterprise Server, Roxen Challenger, ...

7. An integrated object database

In Zope, content is managed with a fault-tolerant Object database supporting transactions and undo.

So the Python objects that Zope developers create and manipulate are stored persistently in this database in a transparent way. The so-called Zope ODB or ZODB works with different storage systems among which you can choose according to your requirements : the default file system-based storage, an add-on storage based on BerkeleyDB, add-on Relational DB-based storages (currently available for Interbase and Oracle), ...

8. Enterprise Data Integration

Zope supports SQL-backend integration through Database Adapters allowing connection to your database server of choice, and an SQL-based language called 'SQL Methods' for querying and updating site data.

From Zope, you can also connect to an LDAP directory, using LDAP integration products made available by other developers from the community.

9. Personalisation

The Zope security API associated with its user management objects and its reporting language, DTML, are the basis for building Web applications with basic personalisation features.

10. Scalability and Distributed Objects

Zope Enterprise Options (ZEO), an Open Source add-on for Zope, can be setup to allow scalability by distributing site load.

CORBA protocols support is currently under experimentation.

11. All Tiers as Managed Content

Presentation as Managed content : Zope's DTML language allows management of presentation logic leveraging HTML, Javascript and style sheets.

Application Logic as Managed content : You can use your prefered (combination of) scripting language(s) - Python by default, and Perl - within Zope.

Data as Managed content : Zope allows separated management of object instance properties, SQL data and XML content.

12. Who is using Python and Zope ?

Major names from the IT industry such as IBM, the News/Media industry such as CBS New York, and Internet Portals such as Yahoo are using Python and/or Zope for some of their projects or sites.
For a list of Zope usage experiences and success stories, check both the Python Community page at Python.org and the Case Studies page on Zope.org.

13. A Strong Developers Community

You can benefit from the community's reservoir of talents by using the Python.org Jobs Board and Zope.org Jobs Board to send job postings.

You can also communicate with developers about technical solutions and projects through the various Zope mailing lists.

14. Documentation and Learning Material

For an overview of the Zope Documentation projects and materials according to your specific needs and technical level, start with the Learning Zope Howto.

There is also the Zope.org Documentation homepage.

Last but not least, there are several books on Zope in preparation, the first one to be available soon being the O'Reilly Zope Book written by Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier, Software Engineers at Digital Creations.

15. Technical Support and solutions from the Zope Community

Zope support, consultancy and education services are available from Digital Creations and various Zope Solution Providers.

You can get professional Zope Hosting from some of these solutions providers.

16. The Fishbowl Process

All projects whether related to the core of Zope or to some feature or add-on product, is specified and managed through an open process on the dev.zope.org site. One of the big benefits is that all developments to Zope have very early community exposure.

At some extend, dev.zope.org is the Zope R&D community where all developers can contribute ideas and code.

17. A Content Management Framewok

Content Managers are the people that add, review and modify web content using simple text editors, or sophisticated tools like Dreamweaver or Frontpage. Thanks to Zope's content management framework, developers can easily build sites tailored for content managers, thus allowing them to easily do their job, simply using a browser and their preferred content editing tools.

18. Supported by major Linux companies

A stable Zope version is provided with the following Linux distributions:

  • SuSe Linux 7.0 Professional Edition
  • RedHat Professional Server 7.0
  • Debian Potato
  • Debian Woody

    19.

    Intentionally left blank. Allows space for the ideas that you haven't had yet and for the ideas of others. (from "An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth" by a designer called Bruce Mau).