Zope 3 out-of-the-box Application for Laboratories

Sample Inventory Program is a web based LIMS for laboratories of any size.

SIP is an Lab Inventory Management System (LIMS) built for the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (SFBR) under grant numbers, NHLBI grant P01 HL45522 and NCRR grant P51 RR013986.

The SIP application requires the Zope 3.0.x release of the Zope application server, PostgreSQL or Sybase Relational Database Servers and the Python 2.3.5 language runtime. Many integration tests exist for various aspects of the SIP application ranging from command line importing of samples and project configuration to CSV web based importing of sample modifications.

Enfold Systems has released the source code for the SIP Application. Find out more:

• Enfold Systems delivers scalable open source Lab Inventory Management System is the Press Release that announces the release of the Sample Inventory Program
• Sample Inventory Program Homepage is the homepage for SIP at Enfold Systems. It contains screenshots, flash demos and feature lists.
• SIP @ SourceForge the SIP application code is available on sourceforge in CVS for continued developed.

SIP was the first Zope 3 application put into production and contains features that everyone should look at. Specifically the SQLObject support package called sqlos that enables zope 3 to use sqlobject easily. sqlos is being actively maintained and enhanced as is SQLObject Object/Relational framework.

It does not use the ZODB. Create your SIP Application. Delete your ZODB. Restart Zope. Recreate your SIP Application

your data is still there! There are some places where ZODB could be leveraged to gain some real performance wins.

Reasons ZODB was not used:

• At the time of development ZODB4 was shipped with Zope 3. It was a large risk to develop ontop of ZODB4. ZODB4 was DOA and its development has been discontinued.
• Reporting tools need to be leveraged using Crystal Reports to show information to project managers and lab staff.
• Relational Database(s) are fast and you get loads of functionality for free. Such as audit tables using TRIGGERS ;-) Look mom, no (python) programming!
• Customer felt more comfortable with SQL.

Zope 3 is a great framework. Thanks to Zope Corp and Jim Fulton for a wonderful application server. Object publishing is great stuff. Now if we can only get an interesting sql story (sqlos?) out-of-the-box and a great packaging system (zipimport/eggs are great!)

world domination will be ours!