Python in a hospital application please help

[Bill Tate]

geraldol at uai.com.br wrote in message news:<mailman.1005415299.17379.python-list at python.org>...
> Hi,
> 
> I want to write an application for the hospital I'm working to. 
> 
> I'm newbie in python, and I want to hear some opinios about what are 
> the options I have..
> 
> The structure I have in mind is : At Server we will have an 
> application that handles business rules, connects to databases, and 
> send objects to the clients .
> 
> At client we will have an wxPython application that will talk to the 
> server application 
> 
> Some things this application must provide
> 
> * Ability to change the database
>   I think one way tho achieve this is via Object Relational mapper.
>   Have anyone implemented a library like this in python ?
> 
> * Pool of connections.
>   In the application I have today all clients have their own 
> connections to the database. Today I'm using Interbase (free one) but 
> what if the hospital need a commercial database in the future ? With 
> a pool of connection we can spent less money, and this is issue in a 
> hospital in little city of Brazil.
> 
> * The communication between the server and the client must be 
> encrypted.
>   Personal information of the patients can't run unencrypted over the 
> wire.
> 
> 
> I know that this is difficult application to write, so I want to hear 
> some design hints, what are the difficulties I'm going to face. What 
> libraries I can use.
> 
> 
> Sorry my english and thanks in advance
> 
> Geraldo Lopes de Souza

Geraldo -
You might check out Webware for Python for some examples on connection
pooling.  Webware employs a very convenient "plugin" architecture that
separates tasks pretty cleanly.  I know they have working examples
there that you should be able to use.  Geoff Tavola has a step-by-step
example there you might useful on using ADO (if you are running
windows).

As far as DB's go, suggest you look at PostgreSQL from the beginning. 
There are numerous advantages with this product not the least of which
is that does have declarative referential integrity (DRI).  If a
database doesn't have DRI - IMHO, then it shouldn't be used to hold
sensitive business information especially patient data.  While DBA's
tend to disagree on a lot things, DRI is not usually one of them.

I think you will also find it convenient to use Postgre's PL/pgSQL
module to store some of your business rules.  It's preferable to
having a lot of embedded SQL spread out across your application and I
think you'll find it much more convenient to developing a full blown
ORM layer particularly for medical/patient information.

I don't know how strong your encryption needs to be, but you may want
to check out M2Crypto.