The Zope Book

Rating:
Summary: An excellent introduction to Zope
Review:

First, an obligatory disclaimer: I was one of the freelance technical reviewers for this book selected from the Zope development community.

Zope is one of today's most exciting development platforms, due to it's combination of power, simplicity, and extensability. I staked my job on using Zope to create a corporate Intranet a year-and-a-half ago, and it was the best career move I ever made.

This book is the first published 'dead trees' book about Zope. The overall tone is aimed at beginners and non-technical users, which is very appropriate even for more experienced web-developers, since Zope introduces new concepts and development paradigms. I found the 'Zoo' examples amusing and a refreshing change from the usual business-world examples.

The book stops short of explaining how to extend Zope using the Python programming language (which Zope is written in), but is nevertheless an invaluable resource on subjects such as DTML (Zope's dynamic templating language, similar to ColdFusion's CFML), Zope's web-based management interface, extending Zope through-the-web using ZClasses, and designing websites that take advantage of Zope's productivity-enhancing features such as Acquisition and Versions.

If you are building websites, whether Intranets, brochureware, community portals, or any other kind of site, Zope is a tool you must evaluate. It will do things you didn't know you needed, as well as solving problems that you do know you have.

Download Zope for free (yes, completely free)... and buy this book. You won't regret it.

Rating:
Summary: A good intro to the leading open source Web CMS
Review: Although Zope may be the leading open source Web content management platform, it has suffered from a lack of comprehensive documentation. This book, and similar titles from Linux Journal Press and Sams, have begun to address this issue, hopefully bringing greater interest in the platform.

The Zope Book was written by Zope developers and is targeted at Web developers and admins who have some experience with Web applications but possibly not content management technology.

Part 1, Introducing Zope, is designed to get the reader started with Zope, explaining how to download, install, and configure the software using the platform's graphical interface. The section describes what Zope can do, explains the basics of the Zope content object model, and introduces Zope's server-side templating environment, Document Template Markup Language (DTML).

Part 2, Creating Web Applications with Zope, gets into the meat of actually making Zope applications. The section talks about scripting with Python and Perl, user security searching, connecting to a variety of relational databases, metadata, and advanced DTML.

Part 3, Developing Advanced Web Applications with Zope, covers the Zope Enterprise Objects model, scaling and extending Zope, and Zope classes.

Appendixes include DTML and Zope API references and a guide to Zope resources, including mailing lists and Web sites.

The Zope Book is not the ultimate Zope refernce, and isn't meant to be.

Rating:
Summary: Becoming dated, missing some key topics
Review: Basic concepts are, I think, well presented. This is terribly important because even those of us who are used to working with web applications might find Zope very different from anything we've used before. This would earn it four stars except for one serious flaw: the book is rather dated. There is no coverage at all of Zope Page Templates or METAL, which are very important topics in today's Zope.

I reduced the rating to three stars because of essential deployment topics that I wanted to see covered that were also completely missing. SSL, the zope.conf file, using Zope in conjunction with Apache, for example. There's probably more, but I just don't know yet that I don't know them.

So I give it three stars for being useful, but having significant flaws. You are better off going to Zope.org and getting the latest on-line docs from there.

Rating:
Summary: Becoming dated, missing some key topics
Review: Basic concepts are, I think, well presented. This is terribly important because even those of us who are used to working with web applications might find Zope very different from anything we've used before. This would earn it four stars except for one serious flaw: the book is rather dated. There is no coverage at all of Zope Page Templates or METAL, which are very important topics in today's Zope.

I reduced the rating to three stars because of essential deployment topics that I wanted to see covered that were also completely missing. SSL, the zope.conf file, using Zope in conjunction with Apache, for example. There's probably more, but I just don't know yet that I don't know them.

So I give it three stars for being useful, but having significant flaws. You are better off going to Zope.org and getting the latest on-line docs from there.

Rating:
Summary: Could be better
Review: If you need to learn Zope, buy this book. That said, if you're already working with Zope, don't bother. This is the official introduction to Zope, and for that, it's excellent. I've bought every book available on Zope, and this is by far the best introductory volume. But as soon as you need to get past the introduction, you'll need to get more information somewhere else. In part this is because Zope is such a quickly evolving platform that any printed material is inherently outdated before the ink can dry. I can't sing the praises of Zope loud enough, and this is THE book to get you started. Buy it, by all means. But be prepared to look for more once you've grasped the beginnings of what promises to be the greatest web application/CMS platform available.

A few words to respond to the detractors here:

- to "beyond the scope of this book" Darren: what the heck did you expect?! You want to use a product in advanced ways, then fault an introductory book for not giving you details on how to do it. I'm a Linux/Apache/Perl guy myself, but the very fact that you insist on talking about Zope in Perl-ish terms shows that you JUST DIDN'T GET IT! Zope is *way* more than just a Python replacement for what we already do. And don't bring the script language wars into this - we're talking about Zope and The Zope Book, not whether Python or Perl is better.

- to "glowing review for Zope" wpbarr: what I said to Darren about faulting an introductory volume for lacking advanced details goes double for you. Installing a Zope product may not have been mentioned, but I'll bet it was at least in part because it's so darn easy that it's not worth wasting print space on. You will *not* waste your saved development time figuring it out - the online and included docs are so clear that you'll learn it in about five minutes, if you trouble yourself to try. As for integrating Zope with existing infrastructure, I repeat: this is an *introductory* volume, not an advanced textbook.

Summary: Don't expect this book to be what it's not, and you'll find it's very much worthwhile. You can frustrate the heck outta' yourself trying to learn to write a sonnet from a "Dick And Jane" primer, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the primer. Ya gotta' start somewhere! ;-)

Rating:
Summary: Solid introduction to the Zope world
Review: If you've spent much time at all on the Zope site, you know who Amos and Michel are. This book is the accumulation of several years of work and an excellent public comment period in which real Zope users were encouraged to find errors/make suggestions/etc. I've been developing with Zope for about two years now and this is the book I wished I'd had when I started.

The Zope Book covers everything you'd expect in an Intro To type book, and has plenty of hands on workshop to get the reader into the real world of using Zope. It also makes a great reference book for more experienced Zope-istas.

Rating:
Summary: Not at all what it promises ..
Review: It was beyond the scope of the book on how to connect with an existing Web Server - Apache in my case.
It was beyond the scope of the book on how to connect with a non-Zope database (PostgreSQL in my case).
It was beyond the scope of the book on how to use Perl scripts with Zope.
It was beyond the scope of the book on how to install new 'products' (similar to Perl modules).

Pretty much anything that you might want to do with Zope beyond a beginners overview is beyond the scope of this book. But then Im quickly learning that the Python community doesn't much believe in accuracy or completeness in any of their 'documentation'.

Rating:
Summary: Zope gets a glowing review; "The Zope Book" does not.
Review: Save your money, visit zope.org and read the online docs because they are no better organized than this book is.

First, you would expect a book to significantly supplement the online and bundled documentation. This one provides little more than a re-write. For example, the book reveals little more about Zope system administration than the basic "double click" install. As far as building from sources, I at least expected the configure options to be documented. I was disappointed.

If you want to install any of the extensions, external resources or products Zope brags about being available (to cut development time), you will apply that saved development time towards figuring out how to install and take advantage of those "time savers."

Second, the book seems to assume all you will ever need or have is Zope. For those of us with existing web servers and databases, this book provides little compelling material to either employ Zope or about integrating it with existing infrastructure.

There must be a better book for Zope ... and there is:

The Zope Bible.

Rating:
Summary: Have a nice development day
Review: Within the last years, the web has become a somewhat serious business. Complex websites no longer use static, hard to update html pages, information is less and less stored in a plain filesystem like we are used to with our personal files.

Sharing ideas with hundred, millions of people (I mean creating a web presence!) involves at least 3 backend elements :

- a database,
- a server,
- a "gluing" language

Zope provides the three in the same application, perfectly integrated and quite easily deployed (respectively Zodb, Zserver, and Python)

What was needed for zope recognition as a good candidate for "out of the box", opensourced, and efficient development plateform, was a good book that would introduce the whole tool for newbies as well as experienced web developers. In short, anyone looking for something more innovative than the traditional solutions (php/apache/mysql on the opensource side / asp/IIS, sqlserver on the commercial side ...)

The book realy helps to "take a grip" at Zope. You'll quickly learn the benefits of a totally object oriented approach (look at the poor object oriented approach of other web scripting tools, such as php, asp or coldfusion), and more importantly, *how* to use the tool.

Chances are that this book won't suffice for realy complex implementations (like creating custom products), but imho Zope is more a "concept" than any other tools, and *understanding* the concept is the key to successfull implementations.

Beside the differents chapters (with each speaking about a particular domain of Zope), you'll find a complete reference of the Zope API, and it's templating language, DTML.

After the reading of this this book, I feel ready for more complex implementations of web applications. That's just what I was looking for. I'd say I'm quite pleased.
As usual, your comments are welcome!

Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction to this incredible technology
Review: Zope (and Python) have gained wide spread audiences over the last couple of years and this book is a great companion to anyone that wants to get in on the hype or wants a book to review all areas of the Zope technologies. If you are unsure if you or your company should switch to a Python/Zope solution when developing websites, you should give this book a read and you will feel more confortable to give it a try.

The book is very easy to understand and it's not really a technical reference. It simply dabbles in many different areas in the Zope technology and covers them all very well. The author is very brief and you'll be able to see what Zope is all about after a few days of reading.

Zope is definately a new, innovative way of developing websites, much along the lines of java enterprise and other collaborative web application servers. If you program in PHP or Perl and want more colloboration, power, sleaker and well structured designs and faster development time, you should look into Zope and purchase this book.

This is the best Zope book out there today! Great job to the authors, Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier, and it's technical reviewing staff who have done a great job making this book flow nicely and without error.