Web Application Server in Python: which one to choose ?

[Laurent Szyster]

Thomas Weholt wrote:
> 
> (...) I've started developing my own application server based on
> Medusa and take parts of the concept behind Zope, Webware, other
> Java-based application servers like Tomcat and Enhydra and it's
> coming along nicely, soon becoming ready for a beta-release. I
> wanted 100% control of my code, complete seperation of design and
> code, "web-components", simpler user/access-management etc. and
> at the same time learn how it all worked, that's why I decided to
> create a new project.

Thomas,

Facing the same problem, I came up with a similar solution.

I had to deliver a Web/SOAP to mail gateway with HTTPS that could
run on Windows and UNIX. So, I worked out a Medusa-based HTTP/HTTPS
server (thanks to M2Crypto OpenSSL binding) with XML persitence and
two object access handlers: one for URL - a la Bobo - the other for
SOAP.

The hard part was to get HTTPS with client certificate authentication
work right with all clients. Another problem was multithreading (and
I still have to commit some ideas about HTTP/1.1 pipelining for
threaded requests). XML persistence is a snap.

The server was tested against Nescape 4.x, IE 5.x and Java JSSE. It
entered production in April and has not failed yet (though it's still
leaking ;-)

I would be glad to share my experience and ideas with you.


Laurent Szyster