From the book lists at Adware Report:

All information current as of 16:26:31 Pacific Time, Sunday, 12 December 2004. The Zope Book    by Amos Latteier / Michel Pelletier   Paperback:     Pearson Education     17 July, 2001    US$27.19     Usually ships in 24 hours     Qualifies for free shipping    (when your total order of eligible items meets the US$25 minimum.)    Check the details for more information. Click the button below to . . .      (which will add the book to your Amazon U.S.A. "Shopping Cart") . . . or use your browser's Back button to return to the search-list page.

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Editorial description(s):

Amazon.com
The Zope Book is an authoritative guide to Zope, an open-source Web application server. Zope goes beyond server-side scripting languages like PHP by providing a complete object framework, a built-in Web server, a Web-based management interface, and load-balancing through ZEO (Zope Enterprise Objects). That's a considerable punch, and Zope is attracting increasing interest from developers looking for an alternative to heavyweight commercial application servers. Zope is implemented in Python, an object-oriented scripting language, and runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris.

Written by Zope developers, this title is concise and to the point. It is aimed at people new to Zope as well as current users, although some existing knowledge of Web technology is necessary. The book is organized into three parts. The first part is introductory, outlining how Zope works and explaining basic DTML (Document Template Markup Language), a tag-based language for server-side scripting. The second, and longest, part tackles users and security, scripting with Python or Perl, using Zope's built-in search engine, and connecting to relational databases. Part three covers scaling and extending Zope, with a short chapter on ZEO and information on creating your own custom Zope classes. Reference material is contained in two appendices, one for DTML and the other for the core Zope API.

The Zope Book offers an excellent, high-level view supplemented by more detail for the most common development tasks. The authors refer you to Zope's documentation or other resources for the most advanced or specialist topics. The result is ideal for evaluating Zope, and also useful for getting started with Zope projects. --Tim Anderson, amazon.co.uk


From Library Journal
Zope is a relatively new and unheralded open-source framework for developing web applications. In order to use it, one must deal with a number of objects (e.g., folders, images, and files). The authors, both programmers at the Zope Corporation (previously Digital Creations), introduce those objects clearly and discuss how they fit together. They then move into more complicated terrain how to handle security issues and scripting with Python and Perl, for example. Zope is becoming a popular alternative to commercial applications, and, likewise, its user base is growing. Libraries serving patrons with web and HTML backgrounds should consider.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From the Publisher
When Amos and Michel came to me to publish this book I was thrilled to have the opportunity to publish the work of such great leaders in the Zope arena. They have worked hard to provide the best resource possible on such a complex topic. Amos and Michel are true New Riders authors in that they are VOICES THAT MATTER.

~Stephanie Wall, Executive Editor, New Riders Publishing


From the Author
This book has been a long time coming. Ever since Zope was released over two years ago, folks have complained that it needed better documentation. This book is the first serious attempt to meet this need. We wanted to produce a book that would teach you what Zope is, and show you how to use it to accomplish practical tasks. Even if you don't know anything about Zope now, after reading this book you should know enough to develop powerful Web applications with Zope.

~Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier, July 2001


From the Inside Flap
Content Highlights

-DTML Documents Versus DTML Methods
-DTML Tag Reference
-ZClasses and Python Base Classes
-Clustering Zope with ZEO
-Using Layer 4 Switching with ZEO
-Scripting Zope with Perl
-Editing Zope with Emacs
-String processing with Python Scripts
-Image Processing with External Methods
-XML Parsing
-Network Services with XML-RPC
-Dynamic SQL Queries
-Direct SQL Query Results Transversal
-"Pluggable Brains" Query Results Classes
-HTTP and RAM Caching
-Setting Security Policies
-LDAP and Other User Source Integration
-Acquisition and URL's
-Ownership and Executable Content
-Catalog Indexes and Metadata
-Stored Catalog Queries
-Automatic Cataloging
-Using CSS with Standard Headers
-Sending Email

"The Zope Book will serve both newbies and experienced Zope users well. The authors provided an excellent learning curve which, while it assumes prior programming knowledge, respects that many users will be new to Zope and therefore works through the material gradually, and still provides enough information to make it an invaluable reference for experienced users too."

~Tane Piper - Webmaster, Zopegeeks.org


From the Back Cover


The Zope Book is a book for web developers and website administrators on how to use Zope.

Part I, Introducing Zope, gets you the reader up and running with Zope, teaches then what Zope can do, whom Zope is for, and how Zope is different from other web application servers.

Part II, Creating Web Applications with Zope, takes what readers learned in Part I to the next step. They learn how to integrate the Zope fundamentals to create robust applications.

Part III, Developing Advanced Web Applications with Zope, instructs readers on how to work with the advanced features of Zope.


About the Author
Amos Latteier is a software engineer with Zope Corporation, the company that publishes Zope. He started hacking Python in the 1.3 days. He was one of the first users of Bobo, Zope's precursor. Using Bobo, he wrote Web applications for Hewlett Packard and others. Later he joined Zope Corporation and helped usher Zope into existence. Amos wrote most of Zope's initial networking and XML support. More recently, he developed training materials, wrote the online Help system, and wrote officially documentation and magazine articles about Zope. He is currently planning Zope's future directions. Michel Pelletier has been a software developer for Zope Corporation since January of 1999, right about the same time Zope became Open Source. Michel likes to hike, fly, read, drink beer, play his horns, and of coarse, hack in his favorite language, Python. Michel lives and works in Portland, Oregon. Before working for the Zope Corporation, Michel was self-employed in a number of jobs including freelance network engineer, waiter, software consultant, beer taster, sales associate, pizza restaurant manager, starving musician, dish washer, bum, Appalachian Trail thru-hiker, and college drop-out.


Book Description
The Zope Book, written by the experts who developed Zope, is a guide to building dynamic Web applications using Zope. Authors Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier teach you how to utilize Zope to write Web pages, program Web scripts, use databases, manage dynamic content, perform collaborative Web development tasks, plus much more.Whether you are new to Zope or are a skilled user, this current and comprehensive reference is designed to introduce you to Zope and its uses and teaches you how it differs from other Web application servers. From installation and advanced features, such as ZClasses, to using Zope with relational databases, or scripting with Perl and Python, The Zope Book provides the instruction you need.




Reader review(s):

Could be better, September 30, 2002
I think a lot of the reviewers for this book are blinded by the fact that Zope is an incredibly cool and powerful technology, especially for the price.

By all means wax lyrical about the capabilities of the platform. Be thankful that it is finally becoming accepted, documented, and widely deployed. But please don't think that this book is great, just because it talks about Zope and is written by a couple of very well-respected zopistas.

I was quite disappointed by this work. It fails to deliver on the promise of teaching you how to build useful applications in Zope. It's 350 pages of "what Zope is" and about 34 pages of "how to use it to do something useful".

This is a common problem with most Zope documentation - the authors themselves get carried away with the technology and fail to point out how it might be usefully implemented. Yet sadly, the Zope community really, really needs a task-focused book like that.

As an introduction to what Zope is, though, this book's not too bad - even if it is a rewrite of online documentation. Hence three stars.

Have a nice development day, September 7, 2001
Within the last years, the web has become a somewhat serious business. Complex websites no longer use static, hard to update html pages, information is less and less stored in a plain filesystem like we are used to with our personal files.

Sharing ideas with hundred, millions of people (I mean creating a web presence!) involves at least 3 backend elements :

- a database,
- a server,
- a "gluing" language

Zope provides the three in the same application, perfectly integrated and quite easily deployed (respectively Zodb, Zserver, and Python)

What was needed for zope recognition as a good candidate for "out of the box", opensourced, and efficient development plateform, was a good book that would introduce the whole tool for newbies as well as experienced web developers. In short, anyone looking for something more innovative than the traditional solutions (php/apache/mysql on the opensource side / asp/IIS, sqlserver on the commercial side ...)

The book realy helps to "take a grip" at Zope. You'll quickly learn the benefits of a totally object oriented approach (look at the poor object oriented approach of other web scripting tools, such as php, asp or coldfusion), and more importantly, *how* to use the tool.

Chances are that this book won't suffice for realy complex implementations (like creating custom products), but imho Zope is more a "concept" than any other tools, and *understanding* the concept is the key to successfull implementations.

Beside the differents chapters (with each speaking about a particular domain of Zope), you'll find a complete reference of the Zope API, and it's templating language, DTML.

After the reading of this this book, I feel ready for more complex implementations of web applications. That's just what I was looking for. I'd say I'm quite pleased.
As usual, your comments are welcome!

Great Introduction to this incredible technology, September 8, 2001
Zope (and Python) have gained wide spread audiences over the last couple of years and this book is a great companion to anyone that wants to get in on the hype or wants a book to review all areas of the Zope technologies. If you are unsure if you or your company should switch to a Python/Zope solution when developing websites, you should give this book a read and you will feel more confortable to give it a try.

The book is very easy to understand and it's not really a technical reference. It simply dabbles in many different areas in the Zope technology and covers them all very well. The author is very brief and you'll be able to see what Zope is all about after a few days of reading.

Zope is definately a new, innovative way of developing websites, much along the lines of java enterprise and other collaborative web application servers. If you program in PHP or Perl and want more colloboration, power, sleaker and well structured designs and faster development time, you should look into Zope and purchase this book.

This is the best Zope book out there today! Great job to the authors, Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier, and it's technical reviewing staff who have done a great job making this book flow nicely and without error.

An excellent introduction to Zope, July 29, 2001


First, an obligatory disclaimer: I was one of the freelance technical reviewers for this book selected from the Zope development community.

Zope is one of today's most exciting development platforms, due to it's combination of power, simplicity, and extensability. I staked my job on using Zope to create a corporate Intranet a year-and-a-half ago, and it was the best career move I ever made.

This book is the first published 'dead trees' book about Zope. The overall tone is aimed at beginners and non-technical users, which is very appropriate even for more experienced web-developers, since Zope introduces new concepts and development paradigms. I found the 'Zoo' examples amusing and a refreshing change from the usual business-world examples.

The book stops short of explaining how to extend Zope using the Python programming language (which Zope is written in), but is nevertheless an invaluable resource on subjects such as DTML (Zope's dynamic templating language, similar to ColdFusion's CFML), Zope's web-based management interface, extending Zope through-the-web using ZClasses, and designing websites that take advantage of Zope's productivity-enhancing features such as Acquisition and Versions.

If you are building websites, whether Intranets, brochureware, community portals, or any other kind of site, Zope is a tool you must evaluate. It will do things you didn't know you needed, as well as solving problems that you do know you have.

Download Zope for free (yes, completely free)... and buy this book. You won't regret it.

If you need to learn Zope, buy this book, February 12, 2002
If you need to learn Zope, buy this book. That said, if you're already working with Zope, don't bother. This is the official introduction to Zope, and for that, it's excellent. I've bought every book available on Zope, and this is by far the best introductory volume. But as soon as you need to get past the introduction, you'll need to get more information somewhere else. In part this is because Zope is such a quickly evolving platform that any printed material is inherently outdated before the ink can dry. I can't sing the praises of Zope loud enough, and this is THE book to get you started. Buy it, by all means. But be prepared to look for more once you've grasped the beginnings of what promises to be the greatest web application/CMS platform available.

A few words to respond to the detractors here:

- to "beyond the scope of this book" Darren: what the heck did you expect?! You want to use a product in advanced ways, then fault an introductory book for not giving you details on how to do it. I'm a Linux/Apache/Perl guy myself, but the very fact that you insist on talking about Zope in Perl-ish terms shows that you JUST DIDN'T GET IT! Zope is *way* more than just a Python replacement for what we already do. And don't bring the script language wars into this - we're talking about Zope and The Zope Book, not whether Python or Perl is better.

- to "glowing review for Zope" wpbarr: what I said to Darren about faulting an introductory volume for lacking advanced details goes double for you. Installing a Zope product may not have been mentioned, but I'll bet it was at least in part because it's so darn easy that it's not worth wasting print space on. You will *not* waste your saved development time figuring it out - the online and included docs are so clear that you'll learn it in about five minutes, if you trouble yourself to try. As for integrating Zope with existing infrastructure, I repeat: this is an *introductory* volume, not an advanced textbook.

Summary: Don't expect this book to be what it's not, and you'll find it's very much worthwhile. You can frustrate the heck outta' yourself trying to learn to write a sonnet from a "Dick And Jane" primer, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the primer. Ya gotta' start somewhere! ;-)

Not at all what it promises .., November 21, 2001
It was beyond the scope of the book on how to connect with an existing Web Server - Apache in my case.
It was beyond the scope of the book on how to connect with a non-Zope database (PostgreSQL in my case).
It was beyond the scope of the book on how to use Perl scripts with Zope.
It was beyond the scope of the book on how to install new 'products' (similar to Perl modules).

Pretty much anything that you might want to do with Zope beyond a beginners overview is beyond the scope of this book. But then Im quickly learning that the Python community doesn't much believe in accuracy or completeness in any of their 'documentation'.

Simple-istic, August 11, 2001
This book is very basic and doesn't really address any of the big issues you would want to see like templated content creation, programmatic extensions, framework services. This is in part due to the design of Zope itself lacking in those areas.

I came to Zope through Wiki. Looks like the idea of Collaboration servers is finally starting to gain some credence. Unfortunately, Wiki, which has been around for ever, is a hacked up mess written in Perl. Zope, being written in Python, and having much more structural mechanisms looked appealing. After looking at it, though, I've found that it to is a shortsighted solution. It is screaming out for a real XML foundation (and plumbing). Instead, you will find that it will let you do some things relatively quickly, but you'll want to hold your nose (unless you are a hacker in which case you may feel at home).

The book that got me into Zope, August 8, 2001
I started using Zope in April. Armed with the Zope Book on-line, I was able to build a Zope site for a professional association of 500 members with on-line conference registration and membership directory service. I want to thank the authors of the book for making this work possible.

the (official) place to start, August 28, 2001
As mentioned in previous reviews, this is a well-written and well-thought-out introductory book to a very impressive open source web application server. I can only add two obvious caveats to what has been already said. 1. You will be able to accomplish some amazing things with ease after you finish this book, but it is a very thoughtful and careful tour of an iceberg's tip. When I finished the last page and saw how much there was to learn beyond it, I couldn't help but be a bit disappointed in my guides that so much territory remained after their part of the trip was done. Zope itself is a large, powerful program that will have many different types of users (content producers, administrators, developers, etc.). This book is an introduction for all of them, but truly sufficient as a stand-alone source for none of them, with the possible exception of DTML Content Producers. (n.b.: The Zope Documentation Project, under whose aegis this book was written, is addressing this need now for some users. A Developer's Guide and an Administrator's Guide are in various stages of completion.) 2. This is dead-tree documentation of a live and growing program, and as such was a bit out of date (Zope 2.3 vs. 2.4, for instance) even on its initial publication date. The authors appear to be trying to keep up (a new electronic update is available), but the speed of Zope development is somewhat mind-boggling. Zope Page Templates (ZPT) and the Content Management Framework (CMF) are extremely powerful and soon-to-be integral parts of the program not discussed in The Zope Book. A copy of The Zope Book purchased now will become more out of date quickly as ZPT and CMF gain importance, even if the authors update upcoming imprints. That's it. My caveats are obvious, and I still gave this thing five stars, so what the heck: go ahead and get it! Zope is an amazing tool and this will get you started. Good luck!

Becoming dated, missing some key topics, April 6, 2004
Basic concepts are, I think, well presented. This is terribly important because even those of us who are used to working with web applications might find Zope very different from anything we've used before. This would earn it four stars except for one serious flaw: the book is rather dated. There is no coverage at all of Zope Page Templates or METAL, which are very important topics in today's Zope.

I reduced the rating to three stars because of essential deployment topics that I wanted to see covered that were also completely missing. SSL, the zope.conf file, using Zope in conjunction with Apache, for example. There's probably more, but I just don't know yet that I don't know them.

So I give it three stars for being useful, but having significant flaws. You are better off going to Zope.org and getting the latest on-line docs from there.

Solid introduction to the Zope world, November 13, 2001
If you've spent much time at all on the Zope site, you know who Amos and Michel are. This book is the accumulation of several years of work and an excellent public comment period in which real Zope users were encouraged to find errors/make suggestions/etc. I've been developing with Zope for about two years now and this is the book I wished I'd had when I started.

The Zope Book covers everything you'd expect in an Intro To type book, and has plenty of hands on workshop to get the reader into the real world of using Zope. It also makes a great reference book for more experienced Zope-istas.

A good intro to the leading open source Web CMS, January 25, 2002
Although Zope may be the leading open source Web content management platform, it has suffered from a lack of comprehensive documentation. This book, and similar titles from Linux Journal Press and Sams, have begun to address this issue, hopefully bringing greater interest in the platform.

The Zope Book was written by Zope developers and is targeted at Web developers and admins who have some experience with Web applications but possibly not content management technology.

Part 1, Introducing Zope, is designed to get the reader started with Zope, explaining how to download, install, and configure the software using the platform's graphical interface. The section describes what Zope can do, explains the basics of the Zope content object model, and introduces Zope's server-side templating environment, Document Template Markup Language (DTML).

Part 2, Creating Web Applications with Zope, gets into the meat of actually making Zope applications. The section talks about scripting with Python and Perl, user security searching, connecting to a variety of relational databases, metadata, and advanced DTML.

Part 3, Developing Advanced Web Applications with Zope, covers the Zope Enterprise Objects model, scaling and extending Zope, and Zope classes.

Appendixes include DTML and Zope API references and a guide to Zope resources, including mailing lists and Web sites.

The Zope Book is not the ultimate Zope refernce, and isn't meant to be.

Zope gets a glowing review; "The Zope Book" does not., December 21, 2001
Save your money, visit zope.org and read the online docs because they are no better organized than this book is.

First, you would expect a book to significantly supplement the online and bundled documentation. This one provides little more than a re-write. For example, the book reveals little more about Zope system administration than the basic "double click" install. As far as building from sources, I at least expected the configure options to be documented. I was disappointed.

If you want to install any of the extensions, external resources or products Zope brags about being available (to cut development time), you will apply that saved development time towards figuring out how to install and take advantage of those "time savers."

Second, the book seems to assume all you will ever need or have is Zope. For those of us with existing web servers and databases, this book provides little compelling material to either employ Zope or about integrating it with existing infrastructure.

There must be a better book for Zope ... and there is:

The Zope Bible.

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