Python for REAL Projects ?

[Steve Holden]

<dragon at hitech.net.au> wrote in message
news:3a380d1e.409238 at bendigo.news.origin.net.au...

[enquiry as to Python's practicality in real-world projects]

> Can this type of project be sucessfully tackled with Python + Tkinter
> + MySQL ??

Personally I wouldn't use MySQL for commercial projects, because of its lack
of support for transactions and referential integrity constraints.  The
former is slated for implementation at a later date, but the latter appears
to be regarded as a feature by MySQL users - at least according to comments
I have seen to the effect that "these can easily be maintained by the
application" (in New Riders' "MySQL").  I don't know whether this is typical
of the MySQL community.

While it may be true, it has the unfortunate effect of requiring application
code to change as referential integrity constraints are added to the logical
schema, defeating the intent to keep programs and data model independent.

I know that many systems have been built around MySQL, and I'll probably get
flamed for saying this by MySQL advocates, but my impression is that MySQL
is a toy system which will not compete in a true multi-user production
environment with commercial products. Not that there's anything wrong with
that, and if you accept its limitations MySQL can be effective.

Fortunately you aren't limited to MySQL as a back-end choice, as Python has
some really good ODBC interfaces which allow Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase and
many other good relational products to be used as a back-end (including,
quite possibly, the Interbase you already use, though I haven't personally
seen ODBC drivers for it).

For better look-and-feel compatibility with the implementation platform you
may wish to consider wxWindows as a GUI, since Tkinter imposes its own style
which is subtly different from any supported platform.

Python itself, however, is a great language for commercial projects.

regards
 Steve