Re: [Plone-developers] Anyone with z3ext experience?

[Jean Jordaan]

Hi Martin & all

> (This isn't the right list for this, by the way; it should go on
> plone-user)

Sorry, since I was enquiring about z3ext's architecture and the
likelihood of code sharing I opted for -dev. Moving to -users.

>> By this we mean a site where users can sign up and participate in
>> forums, upload documents and media, blog, write comments on uploads,
>> and publish some information about themselves.
>
> I don't think Plone is unsuitable for those requirements in general.
> You obviously need to do some feasibility analysis. All of those
> things can be achieved relatively easily in Plone with a sensible
> workflow/security model.

I agree. We were going to go for Plone, but z3ext does it very sweetly
out of the box.

> Plone uses Nabble because Plone uses mailing lists, not forums.

I've had the feeling that Plone doesn't use forums because it hasn't
worked out, despite a number of forum products having been started.
Similarly, bug tracking happens on Trac and Launchpad, and
not so much on plone.org's trackers.

> It's true that this isn't a major focus, but that's a tautology more
> than anything. It's not a major focus until someone focuses on it, by
> writing and contributing code.

Yes, that's what I was trying to convey :-)

> And you can also integrate Plone with am ore dedicated forum product.

That's probably what going with z3ext will mean.

>> Unfortunately, there isn't much documentation yet. Out of 150 z3ext
>> packages in our instance, there are 24 readme files, of which 4 are
>> in Russian.
>
> At this point, I'd probably stop and look elsewhere.

The z3ext guys are aware that this is a problem, and are looking for
funds for documentation. But in the meantime, it looks like a black box
to me. That's what prompted me to ask here, to see whether anyone is
familiar with the architecture and able to explain it.

> If you want something really simple focused on blogging and forums,
> why not use Drupal or phpBB something like that?

My experience with z3ext so far has been very smooth. I like that it's
Python and Zope 3 based, and uses the ZODB.

>> - what are the possibilities of accessing z3ext objects from Plone
>> and vice versa, if the same ZEO server serves both databases?
>
> I wouldn't do that if it were my production database, but in theory it
> shouldn't matter so long as they have the same module path (i.e. you
> have one giant eggs list that includes everything from both systems).
> The risk of clashes is relatively high there, though.

OK, I understand.

>> - e.g. would it be possible to catalog z3ext objects in Plone
>> catalogs?
>
> I can't imagine that'd be anything other than a horrible hack. :)

I think it's a similar use case to ExternalSiteCatalog
http://plone.org/products/externalsitecatalog which has been useful.

> Code sharing is always good, and there's no general reason why there
> couldn't be some z3ext modules used in Plone. That largely depends on
> how re-usable they are, I suppose, and whether anyone tries to
> integrate them. To my knowledge, it's not been done in an open source
> fashion.

The license is open source (ZPL). But it doesn't look like anyone
besides the core coders are involved in it. I do see Plone packages
being released with reuse in mind. E.g. plone.keyring seems to be
pretty reusable, though it doesn't look like z3ext uses zope.location.

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[Martin Aspeli-3]

2009/10/22 Jean Jordaan <[hidden email]>:

>> Plone uses Nabble because Plone uses mailing lists, not forums.
>
> I've had the feeling that Plone doesn't use forums because it hasn't
> worked out, despite a number of forum products having been started.
> Similarly, bug tracking happens on Trac and Launchpad, and
> not so much on plone.org's trackers.

That's not correct. Plone (the project) has always used mailing lists
first and foremost, and a majority of developers prefer that mode of
interaction. I couldn't cope if we had web based forums only for user
support.

Similarly, Poi is nice for small projects (hey, I started it, with
that exact purpose in mind), but not powerful enough for something as
big and complex as Plone. Trac does a great job. Why would we want to
re-invent it? Plone is not in the issue tracking game (and arguably
not in the forum game, although there the overlap is much greater).

>>> Unfortunately, there isn't much documentation yet. Out of 150 z3ext
>>> packages in our instance, there are 24 readme files, of which 4 are
>>> in Russian.
>>
>> At this point, I'd probably stop and look elsewhere.
>
> The z3ext guys are aware that this is a problem, and are looking for
> funds for documentation. But in the meantime, it looks like a black box
> to me. That's what prompted me to ask here, to see whether anyone is
> familiar with the architecture and able to explain it.

This is going to sound facetious, but: it's just not an excuse. If
language is the problem, they could still have written documentation
for every package in Russian and asked for funds to translate. That
would be reasonable. But documentation (like tests) isn't something
you sprinkle on top of a package after it's done, if you get the money
and happen to have the time. It's something you have to think about
and plan for and build in from the beginning. If 126 packages do not
have any documentation, then they are never going to have
documentation, and no-one apart from the original authors or someone
with an obscene amount of time and tenacity are ever going to be able
to understand the system, let alone contribute. Hell, the original
authors will probably struggle if, after package #151, they have to go
back to package #2 and refactor.

Disclaimer: I've not looked at the z3ext code, so what I'm saying may
not apply to them. But it's right. And Plone should do better here,
too.

>> If you want something really simple focused on blogging and forums,
>> why not use Drupal or phpBB something like that?
>
> My experience with z3ext so far has been very smooth. I like that it's
> Python and Zope 3 based, and uses the ZODB.

Good to hear. :)

Have you managed to load test the forums with, say, a few million
posts? Ploneboard does pretty well for small to medium sized forums,
but struggles with very large threads or very large forums. There's
some optimisation in there, but I suspect this is one of those use
cases where RDBMS wins over OODB.

>>> - what are the possibilities of accessing z3ext objects from Plone
>>> and vice versa, if the same ZEO server serves both databases?
>>
>> I wouldn't do that if it were my production database, but in theory it
>> shouldn't matter so long as they have the same module path (i.e. you
>> have one giant eggs list that includes everything from both systems).
>> The risk of clashes is relatively high there, though.
>
> OK, I understand.

Actually, so long as no code from system A ever tries to read or write
to an area of the ZODB created by system B, it should also be OK,
since the unpickling happens in the ZEO client. But at this point, all
you've achieved is to save a port and maybe some memory by sharing a
ZEO server.

>>> - e.g. would it be possible to catalog z3ext objects in Plone
>>> catalogs?
>>
>> I can't imagine that'd be anything other than a horrible hack. :)
>
> I think it's a similar use case to ExternalSiteCatalog
> http://plone.org/products/externalsitecatalog which has been useful.

Right, it could work.

>> Code sharing is always good, and there's no general reason why there
>> couldn't be some z3ext modules used in Plone. That largely depends on
>> how re-usable they are, I suppose, and whether anyone tries to
>> integrate them. To my knowledge, it's not been done in an open source
>> fashion.
>
> The license is open source (ZPL). But it doesn't look like anyone
> besides the core coders are involved in it. I do see Plone packages
> being released with reuse in mind. E.g. plone.keyring seems to be
> pretty reusable, though it doesn't look like z3ext uses zope.location.

Right.

Martin

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[Jean Jordaan]

> Have you managed to load test the forums with, say, a few million
> posts?

That I haven't. Perhaps the z3ext guys have some statistics from deployments.

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[Jean Jordaan]

> Have you managed to load test the forums with, say, a few million
> posts?

By the way, there's a thread on z3ext and performance here:
  http://z3ext.net/forums/devforum/00020/

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