integrating dataface into plone

[compudude86]

ok, i now have a plone site, and would like to integrate dataface into that. it seems they are related, so it shouldnt be too hard, i dont think. thanks

[shannah]

I have done a few projects that use Dataface and Plone together, but just to clarify, the only relationship between Dataface and Plone is that Dataface used the Plone 2.0 stylesheets as a basis for its own. That is about the only similarity. Dataface uses PHP and runs on Apache, whereas Plone uses Python and runs on Zope.

If you are working on a project that has a lot of relational data or it fits a relational model well, but you want to be able to incorporate the information into your Plone site, then what you would probably do is use Dataface for the back-end data management, and Plone as the website front end.

Plone is capable of connecting to relational databases like MySQL using the ZMySQLDA database adapter. Once you have that installed, you can easily create ZSQL methods to perform the queries that you want on your database and call the ZSQL methods from your Zope Page templates.

The good thing about that strategy (ZSQL methods and Page templates) is that it's quick and easy. The down side is that it doesn't fully integrate into Plone. For example, the Plone search won't by default search the relational database, and the Plone permissions don't work the way you might hope they would.

If you want to move to the next step (full integration), you would create some custom content types to wrap the relational data.

I know that this is a VERY brief overview of how it is done, and may not be immediately practical as a means of getting you started, but I just wanted to convey the fact that it can be done - and if done right, can be very effective.

Best regards

Steve