Relational Databases and Python

[ssthapa at harper.uchicago.edu]

glinds - Greg Lindstrom <glinds at acxiom.com> wrote:
>*	What relational database to use?  I am constructing a routine to
>track incident reports for the volunteer fire department I run with.  I also
>want to track personnel information, training records, equipment, etc.  It
>will be a small to medium database (the databases I work with professionally
>run in the terabytes, but we spend millions on software).  I am looking at
>MySQL.  Whatever base I use must be free.

    I suggest using postgresql instead.  I think mysql has limitations such
as not allowing subselects, foreign keys, and similar things that might bite
you latter on. Also I think that until recently mysql didn't have all the ACID
properties (it recently added transactions so it may have it now).  

>*	With an eye to the future, I would like to write a Web-based system
>so that I can offer this system to other volunteer departments in the
>county.  We simply cannot afford $2500+ for reporting software (that will
>fully outfit 2 firefighters including SCBA (breathing equipment) and PASS (a
>safety device)).  Though I have talked with a couple of companies offering a
>"volunteer rate", we simply cannot afford to spend that kind of money on
>software.  How do I get started writing web apps?  I have good friends at
>work telling me that Perl is the way to go; I program both, but am partial
>to Python.

    I think you should be able to use mod_python and mxodbc or pygresql 
modules to write web stuff using python.  I believe zope and pmz also allow 
you use python to do web development.


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