Porting Java web application to Python to make it faster?

[Rick Lawson]

Disclaimer: I love Python but write Java webapps (mainly Struts) for a
living.

I don't think the problem is Java, server side it is very fast. With a
good data access layer and caching (like Hibernate) I think that a
Java webapp will be hard to beat. Sounds like the problem is the
design decision to emulate a rich desktop app as a web based app.
Since this is an internal app you may want to suggest a desktop client
(either  Java or Python based) communicating via Soap or xmlrpc. The
nice thing about doing an rich client app in Java for a limited
audience is you can Webstart it which makes for painless deployment.
On the other hand, I've had good luck writing wxPython based rich
clients and using Inno Setup to deliver a clickable installer.

Good luck,
Rick

Wolfgang Keller <wolfgang.keller.nospam at gmx.de> wrote in message news:<1inbbvrpmu1n6$.a0ikxbujiqk3$.dlg at 40tude.net>...
> Hello,
> 
> as a non-developer I am currently participating in an industrial "research"
> project to develop a so-called "web application". This application serves
> at the same time as middleware to connect several other "conventional"
> enterprise-applications such as ERP, SCADA etc. and to provide a GUI
> frontend to the users. The developers are into Struts, Enterprise Java
> Beans and the like, so it will be entirely implemented in Java with all the
> processing on the server side and only static HTML pages on the client
> side. It will have to "emulate" much of the GUI logic of a conventional
> interactive application with multiple Eclipse-like collapsable panes,
> XForms-like dynamic forms, lots of expandable tree views and sortable lists
> everywhere, plus SOAP communication "behind the scenes" to get and put
> loads of data all over the company's network.
> 
> The developers say it will require "considerable" hardware resources in
> order to allow reasonable response times, according to them >>1GByte of RAM
> for a rather small workgroup (<10 concurrent users). From my own personal
> experience with applications implemented in Java (such as UML and database
> modeling tools etc.) I fear that this might in fact mean that the reponse
> times will be Godot-like and that the application will miserably choke as
> soon as we confront it with real-world amounts of data going beyond the
> usual "three items" toy demonstrations.
> 
> Now the question: If this desaster scenario (I'm working for the industrial
> application partner in the project who expects to get some results that
> will be actually usable for everydays' work) will actually happen (I hope
> it won't, but still...), might there be a chance that by paying a cs
> student for porting it to Python in his diploma thesis using such things as
> Coil, Cheetah, Webware etc. it will get slimmer and faster? And if so, by
> how much approximately? 10%? One order of magnitude?
> 
> TIA,
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Wolfgang Keller