Another one for the IT bods

I should be paying you lot consultancy...

The history. We use an external web developer for our department's site and for a new venture here at work. He likes to use PHP and MySQL. He finds the universit'ies policies restrictive. The uni wishes us to use open source Zope and I think linking into an Oracle database. Also they wish us to use a content management system which should make it easy for a secretary say to update content but which he feels is restrictive.

I have little knowledge in depth of any of this and so as project manager (who we all know have zero knowledge!!) and in the middle of a war between the two.

Any opinions on Zope? Is he correct that Zope with a browser interface CMS is restrictive? Is PHP and MySQL better than Zope using Pyhton etc.

Have the uni screwed up here?

[TSM]

PHP is a language like python.

MsSQL is a DB like Oracle

What CMS does he want to run under PHP. There are tones.

Zope is the CMS, there are others such as Joomla for PHP.

There is a reason things are restricted.
Mostly security reasons.

Zope is quite well known and i would think it's probably quite safe (as safe as anything is these days).

If Zope does what you need, then why not use it?

[timwilky]

No they haven't screwed up. Just look at where industry is. Whilst the inital capital outlay may appear enormous to provide the architecture a good CMS requires. Once operational you will find it only takes a couple of days to deploy new sites etc.

I have not used Zope so cannot comment on it specifically. I have deployed a number of CMS solutions including BroadVision, Cocoon, OpenMarket, Jahia. The first 3 on resilient Oracle installations, and despite oracle being available and free of cost the owner of the Jahia solution insisted on the use of MySQL. Despite problems handling multibyte character sets.

In all the installations I have managed. We insist on a 3 teir architecture to give seperation of presentation, application and data layers. Resilient architecture costs. You need to establish an SLA that accurately describes your outage requirements. otherwise you end up with expensive clustered database servers using directly attached storage networks. Clustered application servers (I like WebSphere for this) and even load balanced fail over presentation servers ,firewalls, switches etc. All big bucks.

Most content editors tend to be marketing or publicity types and tend not to worry about the technology. However they scream when it fails.

CMS is the way to go. Although I use PHP. I would not wish to deploy any large content centric application on it. This is what CMS does well. Using a PHP/MySQL solution is yet another job creation exercise for the developer.

[Spiderman]

Originally Posted by Dr Rich

I should be paying you lot consultancy...

Yes you should!

Thats as far as i read by the way, cost you £59.95 so far.
Cash only thank you, to my usual address.

If you want me to keep readin it'll cost more. If you want an answer then start saving now.

ps. the amount i know about IT you could write on the back of a stamp

Originally Posted by Spiderman

ps. the amount i know about IT you could write on the back of a stamp

We could buy a picture stamp and have half each then!

Hmmm....maybe I should just bang both their heads together, reitterate what I want the product to be and tel them not to call me until a solution is delivered. Perhaps someone can confirm that THAT's project management!!

[fizzwheel]

Originally Posted by Dr Rich

Hmmm....maybe I should just bang both their heads together, reitterate what I want the product to be and tel them not to call me until a solution is delivered. Perhaps someone can confirm that THAT's project management!!

Its probably not a bad idea Dr Rich SOunds like a clash of ego's or personalities to me.

Not like that where I work. Normally I end up telling the project manager what it is the busines wants as one particular muppett seems to always miss the point of the whole exercise. FFS the guy cant even use Microsoft Project and his idea of a gantt chart is a print out from his outlook calender off every day of the month and then scribbling on it in pencil ( his current project is 2 months late and he cant even tell us when he thinks it might be delivered )

[Spiderman]

well, all the above replies may as well be in a foreign language so all i can say is pass me my half of the stamp Doc and DELEGATE, DELEGATE & DELEGATE some more.

My style of managment when i dont have a clue whats going on about me