[aclug-L] Re: volunteers

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

OpenACS requires PostgreSQL (may run on Oracle, but if you have Oracle, you
can run ACS, which is deep in bed with Oracle). The reason for PostgreSQL is
the requirement for transaction processing and a heavy dependence on
referential integrity checks that PostgreSQL has and MySQL lacks (at least
until recently). For a community website I think that's a plus (and I'm not
anti-MySQL in general).

OpenACS was developed to run on AOLserver, although there is also a module
to run it (with some alleged performance degradation) on Apache. I've never
run it on Apache, so don't know what-if-any gotchas are there; if you can
dedicate a machine, AOLserver is pretty easy to set up, and performs pretty
well.

My impression is that Zope is more specifically a publishing tool, whereas
OpenACS is explicitly intended as a community development tool, although
there is a lot of overlap between the two. I see the basic requirement for
the ACLUG website as being something that encourages the community to come
together and share, aggregate, and sort out their experiences, so that each
of us can gain from our common experiences and mutual interactions, which
is at least philosophically very much in the OpenACS vein. Show me a way
to do that in Zope and I'll be duly impressed.

Jonathan Hall wrote:
> 
> I do have experience with Zope.  I considered Zope and OpenACS for a project
> I was doing, and chose Zope, as it seemed to be a much more comprehensive
> product.  I then did my project in Zope, which is where my first-hand Zope
> experience comes from.
> 
> I don't have first-hand experience with OpenACS, aside from the comparison I
> made when I ended up choosing Zope.
> 
> And to summarize that comparison, OpenACS seems to be a more "complete"
> product for "online community" development.  Zope is, as many non-commercial
> Opensource projects, a much more extensive product that can be used for much
> more than "online communities", and interfaces well with a much wider range
> of third party applications (i.e. MySQL, PostgreSQL, I believe even Oracle
> and other DBs) not just PostgreSQL (I believe that's what OpenACS uses).
> And it interfaces with many, many other things, too (I just used DBs as an
> example), and comes with modules and .zexp packages (Zope project packages)
> for many functions.  Yet, Zope, also like many non-commercial Opensource
> projects, has many rough edges.
> 
> -- Jonathan

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