Server-client-development / Data-extraction without databaseaccess

[Cary O'Brien]

In article <39f043a6.172071776 at news.eunet.no>,
Thomas Weholt <thomas at cintra.no> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>I got a PostgreSQL server going. I use a platform independant client
>to store data in pickled files which is later imported into the
>database. The problem arises when platforms without python
>postgresql-driver, namely Windows ( haven't found any
>postgresql-module so far ), wants to extract data from the database
>running on a Linux-box.
>

In my PostgreSQL 7.0.2 source tree there is a win32 directory and
a win32.mak makefile, so you may actually be able to compile
the PostgreSQL client side for windows.  See the code in
src/interfaces/odbc.   So you'd have an odbc .dll that could
access PostgreSQL across the 'net (PostgreSQL has its own built-in
network protocol).

>I'm going to build a Web-interface, but being able to use a
>commandline or a GUI on Windows would be nice too. (
><implicit_linux_praise>At least for the poor fools still using ehem
>.. that os </implicit_linux_praise> ;-> )
>

Hmm.  One easy way would be to have a web server on the Linux
box that returned data in an easily-parseable format.  I setup
one system where going to a url returned a text document with
each row from the query, with each column separated by tildes
(~).  Pretty easy to parse in any reasonable language.

>So I thought of making a threaded server that could accept simple
>queries, actually keywords to look for and simple commands for data
>maintainence, and return some form of data the client could use. One
>solution would be to serve xml-data to the client and avoid the entire
>binary problem. But xml would benefit greatly from compression and
>sending binary files are more difficult according the Socket HowTo.
>

Why not use a server that is already built, like, say, Apache + mod_python
(which is sort of what I'm suggesting above).  Or Zope.  No sense re-inventing 
the wheel.

One nice thing about using a server like Apache or Zope is that you
can put some logic in the server to control access or postprocess
the data.

>If anybody could give hints, code or tips on how to send data, binary
>or plain text of arbitary size, between a multi-threaded server and a
>plain python client, I'd be a very happy man.
>

Are you now? :)

-- cary

>Thanks
>