Help with choice of suitable Architecture

[Paul Rubin]

"Rob Cowie" <cowie.rob at gmail.com> writes:
> I have been asked (as part of an MSc project) to create a server based
> planner for a research group at my uni. It will have a web interface to
> interact with data stored in an XML document. 

Why not just a regular database?

> Basic functionality is required such as viewing, searching, editing,
> creating and deleting entries for things such as paper submission
> deadlines, events, funding application deadlines. I would also like
> to use AJAX principles in the web interface.

Yecch, just use standard HTML, don't depend on client scripting
without a concrete good reason.  It makes stuff more confusing for
both human and automated users, and makes people weaken their browser
security by enabling scripting.  That stuff went out of style with
pop-up ads.

> Additionaly, it must email a BibTex file once a month to a
> predetermined address.

That's no big deal.

> I'm totally new to web programming. I have been looking into the best
> way to proceed. CGI is of course an option but it seems slow, clunky
> and outdated. Twisted provides a rich architecture but might be
> overkill. Nevow seems to be very popular.

CGI is conceptually the simplest, but leaves you needing to do a bunch
of stuff yourself.  A database back end helps a lot in dealing with
concurrent updates.  There's a bunch of other Python web frameworks
too (Spyce, CherryPy, Zope, ...).

For a generic overview, you might look at the now-somewhat-outdated
book "Philip and Alex's Guide to Web Publishing",

    http://philip.greenspun.com/panda/


> I suspect I could achieve what I want using PHP but I would really like
> to get to grip with Python.

If the goal is simply to get to the finish line, PHP might get you
there faster for something like this.  If it's an academic project
where "the journey is the reward" there's lots of things you can try.