Forum OpenACS Q&A: ACS vs. Zope: PLEASE NO FLAME WAR FOR THIS QUESTION!!!

I think this is an important question and I would ask that nobody flames the poster, or anyone else that responds. We've been running up against a lot of competition with Zope because of the propoganda flying around about it. For me at least, as a member of one of the OpenACS companies it's *very* important that I can point to specific strengths and weaknesses for each system.

I am unclear about the differences. ACS has a data model built *precisely* for collaborative and community web applications. 4.X is a major upgrade from 3.X and will provide a great deal of modularity and functionality that was not or could not be provided elegantly in 3.X. It is built for RDBMS's to ensure that it is absolutely suitable for enterprise class systems. The entire focus is on providing transparency among users to enable collaboration in ways that are fast, intelligent and robust. AOLserver is used mainly, but there are strong efforts to update mod_aolserver to mod_nsd so that it can use Apache, either 1.3.X or 2.X.

As far as Zope, I must admit that I know next to nothing about it. From what I know of it, it's primarily a content management system that can do other cool stuff as well. Also, I've heard is that it has a wealth of "utilities" that let it do reasonably cool things (easy server side PDF generation, Outlook synchronization, etc .. but nothing that can't be built into openacs reasonably quickly) and a large user base. It has it's own OODB, which seems to be pretty cool if you are doing some limited website where you just need content management. For real DB applications, you can connect it to a true RDBMS (from Oracle to Postgres). It has a built in server, but it also can use Apache.

In terms of comparison, if you want a good system for content management then Zope is a better choice for now (CMS in the ACS is horrible, at least what aD put out initially and what will be available in OpenACS4.x for its release, but stay tuned, that will change shortly...).

However, it would take *a lot* of work to build into Zope the kind of attention to user interaction and collaboration that is available in the ACS. From our initial research, for instance, there is no equivalent to the bboards system and the being able to view a user's total postings and history in Zope like ACS has out of the box. Also, the ACS has major systems built into like a workflow engine which has been out for a year while Zope just released the specs for theirs in the past few weeks.

So if you're looking for a system for massive DB applications that rely on particular attention to the user's participation, then there really isn't anything that beats the ACS. We think that this is the major win for the ACS and why something like CMS isn't too important for us. A reasonable CMS can be built relatively painlessly, and if you want a CMS with a workflow engine than you spend a lot more money and get somebody that understands what aD did and he'll kludge something for you ;).

As far as the user and developer community, Zope has a much larger one. I can't comment on the quality of it, but I know that Petru (who posted earlier) is involved there and I am very confident in his capabilities. If he says they are pretty good, then I believe him to the degree that I will admit I am agnostic.

However, I *know* the ACS developer community is *outstanding*. There are a lot of really committed and intelligent, albeit a bit surly sometimes, developers here that are doing an amazing job porting the system to Postgres. I fully expect that OpenACS4.X will be a better system than ACS Java for at least a year, given the energy and process it takes to port a system to a knew language.

Also, some of the best ACS developers have always been on this side, rather in the belly of the beast. Not that it's so bad to be at aD, not at all. Just that the kind of development that has gone on over here has been incredible considering we don't have near the amount of resources aD has. As far as Philip's involvement, sometimes it's best that the shepard let's his flock wander away. He was never actively involved on this side anyway.

So I think the basic point is that ACS and Zope have very different core competencies. Zope is a good content management system for which you can build DB applications with (from what I hear because I have no experience with the system). ACS is a great RAD for enterprise class DB applications that require detailed information on how, why, what and where participants used the system. I'm not sure if that is available in Zope, and if not how long it would take to build it into the system.

Hope this helps. If somebody with experience with Zope development wants to chime in, I'd really appreciate it.

talli