Zope

Alan Runyan told me that the donations are piling up and to get things going now, so here I go.First of all, thanks to all the people and companies who have contributed so far. I've always admired the way the Zope community responds to these calls ... [More] for action. I promise to make the most out of your donations.For those who may wonder who exactly is this person who will write the ZODB book, My name is Carlos de la Guardia and I've been part of the Zope community for more than 10 years. I recently wrote a book about web development with Grok, which actually includes a chapter on the ZODB and even a section about running it outside of Zope. I am very happy to get the chance to write about the ZODB and my aim is set on writing something that can both be useful to the community and open up the doors to get more Python developers benefiting from the ZODB. That's why Zope and Plone will not be discussed in the book and the focus will not be on web development. We want to appeal to a more general Python audience here.Throughout the writing process, we plan to use this blog to let people know how the book is going, as well as to publish small articles around ZODB topics that we'll cover. This is also a good place for volunteers to write about ZODB experiences, favorite packages, tips, etc. If anybody wants to contribute to the blog, please say so in the comments and we'll get you started. If you don't want to write posts but have an idea or suggestion for us that would be great as well.I will follow this post with an updated table of contents. The research phase for the book has officially started and I promise to keep you posted. Thanks again for the opportunity. [Less]

The session proposals is open for the Plone Symposium South America 2010 — November 22–28, 2010 in Cordoba, Argentina.

The session proposals is open for the Plone Symposium South America 2010 — November 22–28, 2010 in Cordoba, Argentina.

Utility library for i18n relied on by various Repoze packages

A simple package to add jQuery Tools Tabs UI support to Plone

There are several aspects of using the ZODB which need unusually in-depth coverage. What may be surprising to some readers is that these are supporting libraries of the ZODB. The most important of these libraries which could be used outside of the ... [More] context of the ZODB is transaction. The transaction library for the ZODB is the most robust generic transaction library available in the Python world. It is library-oriented and easier to include into any python program than the deeply integrated transaction frameworks such as MTS or JTA. Why django and turbogears does not use the transaction package has puzzled me.Debugging approaches with the ZODB is vital. The majority of users reading this book will be familiar with RDBMS/SQL. Since ZODB is NoSQL this audience will need to understand how to use a new tool chain to accomplish debugging. An example of this would be: If you are using MSSQLServer you can run the SQL Profiler and watch the SQL statements being executed as your program sends them. The ZODB does not have a traditional client/server architecture such as SQL. This means that debugging requires a different tactic. (Looking for some experienced ZODB developers to blog on debugging approaches;)Another important characteristic of the ZODB which will need to be documented thoroughly will be concurrency and conflict resolution. Currently the ZODB is transactional (rumors in making this optional?). The current transaction requirement is at odds with most of NoSQL and one of the reasons the ZODB community does not more closely associate itself with the movement. Real world applications have concurrent updates. Newbies who do not use conflict-aware data structures can run into problems. This is a well known problem set and can be made approachable with documentation incrementally introducing people to the concepts. It is easy for experienced developers to dive into the inner-workings of technology and turn off new users. This is probably the topic we want the most focus.Partitioning databases, BLOBs, and Import/Export are native ZODB topics that will also be documented. What other features of the ZODB do you think should be documented? What priorities would you give each feature of the ZODB? [Less]

June 22, 2010 - The Zope 3 development team announces the Zope 3.4.1 release.

====================== Zope 3.4.1 Released! ====================== June 22, 2010 - The Zope 3 development team announces the Zope 3.4.1 release. The 3.4.1 is the long awaited next bugfix version of 3.4.0. Major changes ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ - setuptools ... [More] update to 0.6c11, so that it supports svn 1.6. - z3c.layer update to 0.2.4, which is a **SECURITY** fix. For details see the changelog. Packages and Eggs ----------------- Zope 3 is now fully converted to an egg-based system. While some work still remains, it integrates very well with the rest of the Python community. The conversion to egg-based packaging also enables other Python developers to only have to use small bits and pieces of the complete Zope software system. The conversion means that Zope 3 developers do not use the classic Zope 3 tar-ball release anymore. However, for your convenience, Zope 3 developers will provide the classic Zope 3 tar ball releases for at least the 3.4 series. So how are Zope 3 applications built using only eggs? The Known [Less]

The ZODB (Zope Object DataBase) is arguably the most widely deployed Object Oriented Persistence system in the world. Certainly it is the most widely deployed Python-centric persistence mechanism in the world. Every Zope, Plone, and Zenoss ... [More] installation (well over 3 million downloads) ships with the ZODB. The library is usable by all versions of Python (except the 3.x series) and has been hardened with over a decade of production usage.This post is an attempt to provide some constraints around the upcoming ZODB book. Specifically to talk about what will be omitted from the book. I believe it is as important to talk about what is out of scope than what will be covered. So here goes:Zope or Plone usage will not be covered. The goal of the ZODB book is to cover the principles and usage of the persistence system in any Python application. Many people use the ZODB in numerous framework contexts: django, repoze, twisted. Talking about the ZODB in the context of an application/framework shifts energy from the primary task, explaining how to use the ZODB and its supporting libraries from a batteries included Python distribution.Private implementation details of the ZODB. I believe there is some sense of what is public / private members of the classes. Although this clarity is not consistent through all of the packages. There are details in packages like ZEO such as the RPC mechanism which are certainly private implementation and will not benefit ZODB consumers from thorough explanation/documentation.Unused features. There are some aspects of the ZODB that exist and "could be used" but these features may not have wide adoption or consistent experiences from the broader community. Examples include persistent modules or persistent weakreferences. As these features become more widely used they will be revisited in subsequent updates of the ZODB book.While this is not an exhaustive list of what is to be considered out of scope for this book. I hope it sets peoples expectations of the types of things that are not initially considered for inclusion nor believed to be high priority. A complimentary post would discuss how to prioritize the work in the book. What aspects of the library should be given highest priority to focus on documentation. [Less]

Today I was looking into improving a very unusable form. One possible path I was thinking about was to just throw out all types of form generators like Archetypes and z3c.form, and do the whole form just in plain HTML. But the first issue I had there ... [More] was to make several fieldsets. This was slightly tricky, and this is because there is some Javascript magick in Plone to take the HTML code and massage it into the fieldset tabs. So here is some example code to set that up: I haven’t looked into the details here, but the necessary things are obviously the fieldset tags, and then also the hidden inputs with fieldsets:list that list what fieldsets there are. I think the enableFormTabbing class is necessary also.The resulting form looked like this: It was tricky to figure out, but easy once you know this, so that’s why I document it here, even though I probably won’t end up using it. Filed under: plone Tagged: forms fieldsets [Less]