pcplantdb

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <lfl@intrex.net>]

Chad Knepp wrote:

>   o John H.: Can we start with your box, at least until things get
>   more settled? 

I would say that there _may_ be a better than average chance that ibiblio will
be able to offer Zope to the project. I was encouraged by my conversation 
with Paul.

He asked that someone from our group email his staff (help@ibiblio.org) with 
the Zope request
and how much disk storage we will need. I would urge whoever is going to do 
this to follow up now rather than later.
John Howe wrote:
--------------
> If we do end up using your server, we could write that into the next grant.
If it is decided to use my server for the time being, I currently see it
as an environment towards the enventual succession to ibiblio.
Systemically, I see use of my server as "proving ground" to system
requirments @ ibiblio eventually. johncompanies.com is also Open Source
friendly, and I get reduced rates when hosting open source projects.

I do see the project eventually residing at ibiblio. I think in the
interim prototype phases, I have available hosting resources that can
address the development effort. And funding could be pursued to acquire
the necessary dedicated server resources @ ibiblio in the next grant
phases.
--------------
> John H. - as your time permits, would you take this on?
> You have afaik by far the most hands-on experience of any of us for
> informing the ibiblio folks what we/they need in terms of hosting
> resources and config for zope.

Can do, should have something in place by the end of next week. My
thinking is tracking the development for a while, we can procure some
metrics ( cpu, memory, bandwidth, diskspace ) of what the application will
require as it scales.
<><>

So, has John H. contacted them or if not could he do so soon or have Chad or 
John S. do this?

If you will find out once and for all whether you will have Zope on ibiblio 
you can then select your development platform and move on
with work. It sounds like the only and best hosting choice is ibiblio. If 
Zope isn't going to be possible then use Eden or MySQL;
the advantage of the latter is that we might be able to begin accumulating 
resources in HG and have something to show the public,
all of which would help get more funding from grant sources.

> Plan realated stuff:
> 
> So nobody really responded to my emails regarding the fact that 1) I
> need additional time to learn Zope and 2) I really only can commit to
> 30 hours a week.  This definitely puts a skew on the Project Plan, and
> I'd like some feedback.  According to the plan I am scheduled to

That is definitely Stephanie's department.

> Zope cons: 
>   o Big learning curve.
>   o Unknown performance (speed).
> 
> Zope pros:
>   o Lots of built in tools.
>   o Supports OO data model.

I'd say it would be a good idea to determine if it is really going to work 
for you before asking ibiblio to install it for HG.

> Eden cons:
>   o No built in tools except for the current engine.
>   o Table based data model.
> 
> Eden pros:
>   o Known high performance.
>   o Quick start w/existing code.

It's up to the programmers but I vote for getting going sooner with Eden or 
MySQL;
you would have Richard onboard with greater ease with this option.

> My take and I think John^2's is that Zope is the better choice.  It
> will probably take more time to get going with it, but with all the
> built in tools and packages available it will probably save time in
> the long run.  Although I don't know how it will perform I'm pretty
> confident that we can optimize performance bottlenecks as we go along.
> We can in fact use MySQL (or another RDBMS) as the storage backend to
> ZODB if FileStorage isn't fast enough or becomes unscaleable.

This sounds great but please contact ibiblio about ZOPE rsn.

> Something I hope you consider putting in this post is emphasizing the
> commitment the group (or parts of the group) has to the long term
> vision of creating an all encompassing knowledge base of permaculture
> information... and that this knowledge will have connecting
> information about how the elements of this knowledge relate to each
> other.  Something about how it's going to be more than plants anyway.

If it is done on ibiblio I can be counted on to help out in a variety of ways 
for the long haul.
I plan to focus more of my attention on HG than on any other web projects I 
work on, now or later.

-- 
L.F.London
lfl@intrex.net
http://market-farming.com
http://www.ibiblio.org/ecolandtech