The Open Source Zone

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. <p>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.<p>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.

I think a lot of the reviewers for this book are blinded by the fact that Zope is an incredibly cool and powerful technology, especially for the price.<p>By all means wax lyrical about the capabilities of the platform. Be thankful that it is finally becoming accepted, documented, and widely deployed. But please don't think that this book is great, just because it talks about Zope and is written by a couple of very well-respected zopistas.<p>I was quite disappointed by this work. It fails to deliver on the promise of teaching you how to build useful applications in Zope. It's 350 pages of "what Zope is" and about 34 pages of "how to use it to do something useful".<p>This is a common problem with most Zope documentation - the authors themselves get carried away with the technology and fail to point out how it might be usefully implemented. Yet sadly, the Zope community really, really needs a task-focused book like that.<p>As an introduction to what Zope is, though, this book's not too bad - even if it is a rewrite of online documentation. Hence three stars.

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 In part this is because Zope is such a quickly evolving platform that any printed material is inherently outdated before the ink can dry.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.<p>A few words to respond to the detractors here:<p>- 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.<p>- 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. <p>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! ;-)

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.<p>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. <p>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.<p>Part 3, Developing Advanced Web Applications with Zope, covers the Zope Enterprise Objects model, scaling and extending Zope, and Zope classes.<p>Appendixes include DTML and Zope API references and a guide to Zope resources, including mailing lists and Web sites.<p>The Zope Book is not the ultimate Zope refernce, and isn't meant to be.

Save your money, visit zope.org and read the online docs because they are no better organized than this book is.<p>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.<p>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."<p>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.<p>There must be a better book for Zope ... and there is: <p>The Zope Bible.