Summary

By converting from CGI to Zope components, Automatrix greatly increased the performance of its Musi-Cal on-line concert information search interface.

Case Facts

Musi-Cal provides a free concert listing service over the Internet. Through Musi-Cal, Autmatrix's database holds continuously updated information on musical events and venues around the country. This information is made available via Musi-Cal's web search interface. Advertisers can use Musi-Cal to reach targeted audiences. Web masters can subscribe to enhanced Musi-Cal services. Consumers can get timely musical information.

The key to Automatrix's Musi-Cal business is delivering musical information on the web.

Problem

To provide web access to their concert database, Automatrix was relying on a number of CGI scripts. The CGI scripts had poor performance and less than optimum maintainability.

Solution

To improve its Musi-Cal web interface, Automatrix switched to using Zope components.

ZopeHTTPServer allows Musi-Cal to operate a long running server process which greatly increased performance by doing away with slow CGI script start-ups. ZPublisher allows Musi-Cal's business logic to be consolidated from many CGI scripts into a more maintainable object-oriented module. This makes it easier to add new services in addition to obviating the need for custom publishing code. ZTemplates provide a high-performance and flexible way of generating HTML, which works in tandem with ZopeHTTPServer to eliminate redundant templating parsing overhead.

Together these Zope components form a high performance and maintainable web interface for Musi-Cal searching, which operates more than four times faster than the former interface.