fairly large webapp: from Java to Python. experiences?

[bruno at modulix]

john_sips_tea at yahoo.com wrote:

(snip)

> Does anyone here have any experience with large(ish) webapps in Python?

Depends on the definition of "large(ish)". If you use KLOC as a metric,
you can expect a Python solution to be 5 to 10 time smaller, so what's a
'large' app in Java may end up as a small/medium app with Python !-)

> I was sniffing around the following A-team of toolkits: CherryPy,
> Cheetah, SQLObject, all behind Apache2. 

If you plan to run behind Apache2, you may want to have a look at
Myghty. It's somewhere between a framework and a templating system, and
the architecture is based on Perl's HTML::Mason, which has proven to be
successful. It adds to Mason the possibility to take a clean MVC
approach (as well as the more ServerPage oriented approach of Mason),
and can be deployed as either a mod_python handler, fastcgi, plain old
cgi, WSGI, and even as a standalone app (with a Python HTTPServer) for
developpement.

You may also want to take a look at Turbogears (CherryPy + SQLObject +
Kid + Mochikit) or Subway (CherryPy + SQLObject + Cheetah).


> Has anyone seen performance
> issues with Python webapps?

Actually, only with Plone or CPS (or other ZopeCMF based app). Zope
itself is pretty usable, but the whole CMF part is a monstruosity IMHO.

> Could one reasonably expect to have an easier time with maintainence
> and future modifications with using Python over Java?

Err... It of course depends on first having well written code and a
sensible design, but when it comes to agility - and as long as you stay
away from Zope's CMF !-) -, I bet that Python beats Java hands down.

> Any tips, stories, recommendations, and/or experiences are most
> welcome.

It took me about one month to write my first Zope application - an
ad-hoc mix of an online catalog and basic CMS (pages, news,
downloadables files, ...), with LDAP and PostgresSQL in the mix,
fulltext and advanced search, newsletter subscription, a 'members' zone
etc. I had to learn Zope during the process, and I guess I could
actually rewrite the whole thing in less than 2 weeks with a much better
design - but what, the app is in production for 2 years with near zero
corrective maintenance (the biggest problem we had was with system
updates messing with the psycopg adapter...), gives full satisfaction to
the customer, and has for now proven to be  very easy to modify and
evolve (so easy that we didn't even bothered to bill the customer for
much of the modification requests)...  And Zope is certainly not known
as the most agile or lightweight Python web framework/application server !-)



-- 
bruno desthuilliers
python -c "print '@'.join(['.'.join([w[::-1] for w in p.split('.')]) for
p in 'onurb at xiludom.gro'.split('@')])"