Web server with Python

[Thomas Weholt]

"Patrick Useldinger" <p.useldinger at myrealbox.com> wrote in message
news:tnr1mvgnt45urvu6n4q6dso3eto73hfr1m at 4ax.com...
> Hi all,
> after my unsuccessful try to run Apache 2 with mod_python and Python
> 2.3, I am looking for an alternative approach.
> My aim is to write a small web-based application:
>
> Python
> - the solution must be based / usable on Python 2.3
>
> Portability
> Targeted plaforms are
> - Windows 2000 Server
> - Windows XP Pro
> - AIX 5.1
>
> Webserver:
> - supporting up to 50 concurrent client connections
> - must be able to use Python 2.3 to create dynamic pages
> I can think of 3 alternatives to Apache:
> - Medusa
> - Twisted
> - Zope
> Which one is the easiest to work with? Which one is known to work on an
> AIX 5.1 platform, for instance?

I've worked with Zope, Medusa and Twisted. If you can use anything found on
www.zope.org under resource and like to do everything in a webpage, not
doing much programming yourself, then Zope might be the thing. It covers the
python-code a bit much for my taste ( a bit being a huge understatement ).

Medusa is easy to work with but I had some problems with blocking and
form-handling ( mainly posted files etc. ) but it might have been my lack of
understanding back then.

Twisted is very easy to get a grip on if you stay away from Woven and use
the resource-class yourself. I can produce a very simple example if you
like. I find Twisted to have a very steep learning curve in some areas and
the project do have a feeling being "under construction", but the
developers/mailing-list are very friendly and helpful and glad for input.

I haven't done anything on AIX so I don't know anything about portability.
I'd go for Twisted if you want control, Zope if you can use any existing
"product" available at zope.

>
> Persistent storage
> - Is ZODB easily usable from outside Python, i.e. to produce reports
> without reverting to programming?
> - Is MySQL with Python a good combination?

MySQL is easy to work with using Python, so yes. My experience with ZODB has
not been good. I had problems compiling earlier version of it ( probably my
fault but still ) and I quickly found out that I needed SQL to be able to
store and retrieve data the way I wanted. If MySQL is too much for you take
a look at SQLite, it has a python-module and easy to install/distribute and
it is a "real" sql-database, ie. it can understand SQL and feels like a
SQL-database.

Thomas W