[Erp5-users] A question regarding ERP5Types

[Alexey Morozov]

Hello!

I'd like to ask if there's a documentation about programming w/
ERP5Types beside the Kevin's tutorial which is more ERP5-centric.

Currently I'm not sure if ERP5Types is an appropriate tool for us, so
please tell me if I'm wrong about its functions and possibilities.

To describe what I'm looking for let me first describe what we have now
and what we need (in future). Right now we have a custom /solution/
which includes a Zope site (some parts w/ CMF, some just pure
DTMLs/ZSQLs etc) which acts as "an inventory and support" application.
Some parts of this solution are ZODB-level stuff (DTMLs, scripts, ZSQLs
etc) describing users interface to the relational database. This stuff
is partially auto-generated from the [database] scheme using Apache
velocity engine w/ custom templates. In the generated area "classes" are
represented as Folders in Zope, their methods and properties are
DTML methods, ZSQLs, python scripts etc.

Now we have a growing need to make a transition from these
"pseudo-classes" to real (disk-based?) python classes which instances
could be put into ZODB (smth like Formulator forms but we need
a richer set of properties types and these properties could be 'complex
types' defined earlier). Well, it seems that these classes should be
generated from declarative descriptions (i.e. class name, properties
list w/ their types and a list of possible actions w/ object instances
like 'show itself', 'edit itself' etc). We also need in a really near
future to track changes in instances of these classes and have an
instance-based security settings, so transition from RDBMS to ZODB seems
feasible.

That is I'm looking for a way to generate these classes and to minimize
well, intellectual efforts to do everything correctly. Probably it would
be wise to use an existing technology/product for Zope, which could
provide necessary functionality for the generator. As far as I
understand ERP5Types could be used for this, but is it a really worth
idea? Could it be efficiently used without the rest of ERP5 (I know that
it doesn't depend on it directly)? What are possible
problems and objections? Are there developer-level docs for it?

I'm really sorry for the long introduction to few short questions but I
don't know how to describe what I need shortly. Thank you for your
attention.

Alexey Morozov.