Going from webscripting to server-client software.

[Emile van Sebille]

Have you looked at WorldPilot?  Being that you're already familiar with
Zope, it may be a good fit.  Assuming, of course, that they have added
resource planning in the year and a half since I asked about it.  Looking at
http://www.worldpilot.nl:8088/WorldpilotSite/Worldpilot/ suggests that it
may now be in there.

--

Emile van Sebille
emile at fenx.com

---------
"Stephen" <Shriek at gmx.co.uk> wrote in message
news:6572890e.0107251014.47e07810 at posting.google.com...
> Up to now all of my experience with Python programming is for the
> World Wide Web either Python CGI or Zope. Now I am developing
> some software where the client is no longer a web browser and I
> find it's a much harder proposition.
>
> The application is a booking system for a sports centre. There are
> 8 people who will use the software to check if a sports hall or
> squash court is in use or reserved.  I did this first with an
> intranet and it was really easy. But it was possible for one of the
> staff to be looking at a resource (eg. a squash court) and not
> be aware of a booking made by another member of staff in real time,
> which could lead to double-bookings if telephone bookings are made.
> They do not like to hit refresh in order to see the most up to date
> status of a particular resource. They want software more like
> Windows-applications.
>
> How should I keep all of the client applications in synchronization
> with each other?  When each client app is opened, it gets all the
> bookings for the day from the server.  If the user wishes to display
> another day, it requests all bookings for that date. However, if
> one client makes a booking or edits data, how should it update all
> other client apps?  Should it send the data back to the server and
> then each client request any changes each and every second ? Or
> should the clients communicate between themselves ? This latter idea
> does not sound very scalable.
>
> I know there's lots to learn here and would prefer to go read up
> rather than trouble you so any helpful resources will see me on my way.
> Should I be looking at SOAP/.Net or Visual Basic or Java/CORBA instead
> or is Python up to it?  What other caveats are there ?
> I'm sure somebody must of created something like this already for
> resource management.
>
> Regards,
>
> Stephen.