Does Python scale for heavy web loads?

[Michael Haggerty]

markhaliday at my-deja.com writes:

> Question: Using Python as a CGI and running it under Apache, would
> Python realistically be able to handle 5,000 hits an hour and not
> degrade performance?  With Python's threading, (ex: using a
> Default.py script as an example) I call Default.py to render some
> information, only one thread runs Default.py right?  No other people
> can hit Default.py until Default.py finishes with its original
> request and serving the information back...Correct?

We are working on a package (PyWX) to run python programs in a
multithreaded way inside of AOLserver, which is an open-source,
multi-threaded, industrial-strength server.  The interface is a little
bit different than CGI but it is quite easy to work with.  Key is that
it is multi-threaded so the Python interpreter doesn't have to start
up separately for each script.  On a 500MHz Pentium with no special
optimization this configuration can serve about 230 trivial Python
pages per second; a trivial Oracle-querying script at about 75
pages/s.  The package is fairly stable and is being used for a couple
of serious development projects.

For details see

    http://pywx.idyll.org

Michael

-- 
Michael Haggerty
mhagger at alum.mit.edu