Summary

BCSwebservices.net is a leading web development and hosting company located in Tysons Corner, VA. Operating in a competitive, fast-growing industry makes it crucial for us to deliver projects quickly and efficiently without losing quality. ZOPE has allowed BCSwebservices.net to increase our competitive advantage and to give our clients increased control over their websites with the content management tool.

Case Facts

BCSwebservices.net needed to move away from Microsoft-based solutions to platform independent solutions, such as Java or Python. Our objectives were to cut down on our development time, develop complicated web applications fast, improve software quality, and offer our clients increased flexibility and control over their websites by using a content management tool that could be easily implemented.

Problem

Visual Basic presented difficult deployment (due to GUIDs) and both VB and ASP had long development cycles. We had been using (and still do for clients who insist on it) MS tools almost exclusively for web apps. While we enjoyed their speed, we found fixes, deployments, and other maintenance to be very expensive. We needed a more flexible platform.

First, we evaluated Java. This is an extremely overhyped language. Yes, it�s neat (or at least nicer than C++), but it doesn�t do what it says (write once, run anywhere). And, in actuality, it is not a very robust language (no multiple inheritance, strongly typed, and excessively long � like other C derivatives). Java, like C++ required extensive coding to implement a solution and this simply was not cost conscious. Then came Python � a beautiful language. We had prototyped some apps in it previously and found that they about tripled in size (lines) and, accordingly, became more complex when we rewrote them in VB. Python was clean, robust, and easy to learn.

Ultimately our pursuits of an app server led us to Zope. At first it was better simply because it allowed us to use Python, but then we realized that Zope in itself had powers that dwarfed our previous development environments.

Solution

Python and Zope have become, respectively, our language and platform of choice. Python boasts a clean syntax and is (in our opinion) superior to other languages for what we do. While Python may be less commonly known, Java developers can easily make the leap to Python. Additionally, developing applications with Zope requires less code than other Using less code reduced our development time and resulted in increased productivity and higher quality.

While working with one of our clients on a database driven survey site, BCSwebservices.net found ZODB (Zope Object Database) to be a valuable and flexible feature that allowed us to store data that previously had to be kept in a relational database. On this project, we used both ZODB and SQL Server, finding the two to be a powerful combination. In recent projects, we have been relying more heavily on ZODB. We have found that ZODB, in combination with ZCatalogs, can be a highly functional database. Although this type of database requires lateral thinking in previously unavailable directions, it has significantly reduced our delivery time.

Since Zope operates under a web development environment, implementing a content management tool that offers our clients the power to change their website�s content instantly has been relatively easy. Currently, all of BCSwebservices.net�s web assets as well as all of our clients� web assets operate under Zope.