Event notification system - where to start ?

[geskerrett at hotmail.com]

We have been asked to develop and application for a client that is a
'notification" system.  We would like to use python, but are struggling
to find the right starting point.  Any suggestions, tips or sample code
would be appreciated.

Application outline;

Machine A is running a "listener" application that is connected to a
another device via the serial post and waits for events.  We have not
problem working with the serial port, or the waiting for the event to
happen.

When A received a specific event, it needs to send a message to machine
B that and event has occurred and that type of event.

Machine B will take the event notification, processes some additional
information (ie. database lookups) and then notify a series of clients
that have "registered" with machine B to receive events.

I think this is sometimes called "published/subscriber" ???

We have looked at xmlrpc, but at there would be no outside clients, it
seems to have a little more overhead than we need.

We also looked at the asyncore and asynchat, but are having difficulty
gettng starting with these.  If someone has a working example of a
"chat" server using these modules they could share it would be very
helpful.

So ... any suggestions ?