Zope X3 is the next major Zope release and has been written from scratch based on the latest software design patterns and the experiences of Zope 2. The "X" in the name stands for "experimental", since this release does not try to provide any backward-compatibility to Zope 2.

Zope is an open source web application server primarily written in the Python programming language. It features a transactional object database which can store not only content and custom data, but also dynamic HTML templates, scripts, a search engine, and relational database (RDBMS) connections and code. It features a strong through-the-web development model, allowing you to update your web site from anywhere in the world. To allow for this, Zope also features a tightly integrated security model. Built around the concept of "safe delegation of control", Zope's security architecture also allows you to turn control over parts of a web site to other organizations or individuals.

Zope users include Viacom, Boston.com, Lufthansa, SGI, AARP, Bell Atlantic Mobile (now Verizon Wireless), Red Hat, NASA, the US Navy, ishophere.com, i-Gift, IDG (Brazil), GE, Digital Garage, Verio, www.HireTechs.com, Park City Ski Area, and Storm Linux.

Downloads

http://zope.org/Products/ZopeX3

Installation instructions for both Windows and Un*x/Linux are now available in the top level README.txt of the distribution. The binary installer is recommended for Windows.

Add-on packages will also be available at

http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope3-Packages

Documentation

There are several documentation sources for learning Zope 3.

• Zope 3 Developers Book. This book will be published later this year by Sams Publishing.
• Zope 3 Programmer Tutorial
• The "API Doc Tool" is available as part of the Zope 3 online help. Once you started Zope 3, you can reach it via http://localhost:8080/++apidoc++.
• Zope 3 Developer Info
• "Web Component Development with Zope 3" is a second Zope 3 book that will be out in January 2005 by Springer Verlag.

Resources

• Zope 3 Development Web Site
• Zope 3 Dev Mailing List
• IRC Channel: #zope3-dev at irc.freenode.net

Notes

• On Windows, you must uninstall any previous installation of Zope X3 before installing the new release.
• Zope X3 depends on zlib, which is usually compiled into Python by default, but if your system does not have the zlib library installed, it will skip to build the zlib module.
• When creating the Zope 3 installation using the configure/make process, a few tests will sometimes fail, if you specify a relative prefix path. If this happens to you, just use the absolute path.

Acknowledgements

Thanks goes to everyone that contributed.

Albertas Agejevas, Steve Alexander, Don Baarda, Volker Bachschneider, Anthony Baxter, Michael Bernstein, Stuart Bishop, R. Sean Bowman, Axel Bringenberg, Tom Cameron, Godefroid Chapelle, Fred Drake, Phillip Eby, Ulrich Eck, Bruce Eckel, Suresh Babu Eddals, Paul Everitt, Martijn Faassen, David Fregon, Jim Fulton, Marius Gedminas, Shane Hathaway, Christian Heimes, Eckart Hertzler, Any Hird, Michael Howitz, Dominik Huber, Jeremy Hylton, Roger Ineichen, Richard Jones, Andreas Jung, Alexander Limi, Kevin Littlejohn, Chris McDonough, Mark McEahern, R. David Murray, Gustavo Niemeyer, Scott Pascoe, Tim Peters, Gary Poster, Kiki Pruvot, Sathya Rangaswami, Stephan Richter, Paul Roe, Guido van Rossum, Alan Runyan, Tres Seaver, Sidnei da Silva, Peter Simmons, Garret Smith, Jan Smith, Adam Summers, Kapil Thangavelu, Christian Theune, Bjorn Tillenius, Dimitry Vasiliev, Richard Volpato, Barry Warsaw, Gregoire Weber, Philipp von Weitershausen, Paul Winkler, Chris Withers, Nathan Yergler, Rob Zaar, Viktorija Zaksiene