Rating: 
Summary: Give it a second chance, your patience will be rewarded
Review: This book has had a slating from several reviewers, mainly due to the fact that the code supplied for Chapter 3 doesn't work as is - at least on current versions of Zope. I found that by removing the quotation marks from all the dtml-sqlvar variables it then worked perfectly, and the code from chapter 4 had no issues at all.Other than that, this is a fine introduction to many aspects of Zope and well-known Zope products, though perhaps becoming a little outdated now (summer 2003) with the advent of Plone and the imminent(ish) release of Zope 3. There are some typos, and the book is written in a charming European English: these shouldn't cause you any real problems.
Rating:
Summary: Better than The Zope Book but somewhat dated.
Review: Unfortunately this book is getting somewhat dated and if you don't have the inclination to check on the things it says or get involved with the on-line community you might find yourself rather out of date. Most of the core concepts of Zope are still somewhat the same. However the book does miss some areas but it is a good primer. It's, in my opinion any ways vastly better than The Zope Book which is very poorly written, unfriendly, confusing and all around not good. I recommend this book for people who already understand Python and have developed web applications in the past using other technologies. That's not to say this book isn't a good primer, it's still fairly good for that too. But expect to back up your reading with some IRC conversations in #Zope irc.freenode.net best of luck all you Zopers.
Rating:
Summary: Hit and Miss book that's an excellent supplement
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Hit and Miss book that's an excellent supplement
Review: 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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