Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Proofreaders Needed, July 13, 2002
I have just retured from a trip to the dumpster; after tearing my hair out for two hours over the example in Chapter 3, I have rediscovered why I rarely trust books from this publisher. The example, as written, does not work, and the publisher has not offered any sort of errata for this book. If anyone would like a free copy of this book, go comb the Rockland landfill.Aside from the untested and unproofed examples, the text was rather disjointed, and provided a skimming the surface view of Zope that seems to offer precious little foundation in the system. The open source book, provided at [web address] has been far more helpful, and cheaper to boot.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Buyer Beware - Full of Errors, Typos and bad code, March 29, 2002
Buyer Beware. I bought this book to work through enough tutorials to prototype a Zope site. For each chapter, there are missing code fragments, code on the CD that doesn't match to the book, and lot's of general typos. I forgive the typos, as I believe this a translated work, but not having matching code really ticks me off.In general, even a skilled developer _will not_ be able to work through _any_ of the examples to fruition. Thus the [money] you'll spend here will get you some background information, but not working examples. The final insult to the reader is that the Publisher does not have an errata site where corrections could be posted. If you have the time, do some more research and skip this purchase. In the meantime, I'll continue to try and learn Zope... where's the zen?
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hit and Miss book that's an excellent supplement, April 1, 2002
Zope WACK can povide some very good general understanding of how Zope works and what you are supposed to do in order to get work done. It is particularly good, for instance, on the installation issues - better than the free downloadable Zope book. When it comes to specifics, though, it leaves quite a bit to be desired. Zope's foundation lies on the ability to manipulate web data - most notably databases. WACK's initial chapter on connecting Zope to databases provides a step-by-step tutorial - an addressbook example using Zope's built-in limited database (called Gadfly)... that doesn't work. Given that WACK doesn't provide an overview of how the various pieces are supposed to work together, troubleshooting is hampered even more. More frustrating, WACK falls into a familiar trap of books of this sort: there is no indication of possible troublespots to look for when something goes wrong (e.g., user error). Finally, since the examples WACK provides are cumulative, if something doesn't work - and you've quadruple-checked your code character for character - you're stuck.In general, though, WACK is a book of individual tutorials for various uses for Zope, rather than an overview of how Zope can be used to build web applications. The book IS one of the better descriptive texts on how to do various Zope tasks, as it's written in very clear language (the authors are German, and the Sam's proofreaders failed to catch all of the translations, so be prepared for minor German vocabulary lessons). I would recommend this book for an alternative explanation on how to do things, but be prepared to have another, more technically accurate, reference manual handy to cross-check the glitches.
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