ASP courses mirgration

Hi guys,

I'm going to migrate an ASP + OLEDB system to Plone. I am thinking of how to
do so.

Here are some important properties of the existing system:

1. it is not small: 1.77GB (25309 Files) including data and source files
(about one out of tenth are source)
 * I have not checked out the Database yet, but it should be a whole bunch
of user and primary data containers.

2. it is quite complex: it contains many object types: javascript, java
applet, VB .cab , window's stuff (such as MS Agent), flash, html, and asp.

3. It is now running on MS Window system, with IIS running for the ASP.

4. It is used by 200 ppl now, but the number will be increased dramatically
to ten times first, and may be (probably) much more later.

5. The source will be re-distributed to smaller institutions. The same
source will be copied to different servers many times. And different servers
can edit the content for their own.

6. The courses content will continually be developed (Adding new type of
questions, content).

My questions is:

1. Difficulty: The difficulty of converting so many ASP source to Plone.
(will it even be impossible in most cases? or I better to re-write the whole
system?)

2. Database: The concerns of using the existing OLEDB connection. Is there
any way for my Linux Plone site use the OLEDB (it should be connecting to
MSSql )

3. Compatibility: I am planning to keep all the client  side stuff, such as
the java applet, MS Agent, etc. No problem, right? then my concerns can be
limited to ASP source converting, no worry for other coding.

4. Scalability: Plone can handle such number of users, rite? (should I use
ZEO for thousands or tens of thousands of users?)

5. Maintainability: As the course content will be updated continually, I
must provide a way to update the distributed server's coding conveniently. I
am thinking of making a new CMF type, and just updating my Product Type and
restarting will work.

6. Any other suggestion/comments?


Thanks guys,
Arthur







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