Distributed computing using SOAP. What about speed ?

[Tim Daneliuk]

Graham Dumpleton wrote:
> 
> "Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote in message news:<LBA77.58$bXi.175168000 at news.telia.no>...
<SNIP>

> > It's also clear that some problems might occur cuz the BaseHTTPServer which
> > is used for the most part, have performance issues. Perhaps implementing the
> > server using asyncchat etc. would increase performance ?? Why aren't the
> > modules allready implemented with these tools available in the standard
> > python lib allready, if that's the case?
> 
> OSE is implemented using an event driven system model. This includes the HTTP
> servlet framework, such that multiple requests can be handled at a time etc.
> It includes mechanisms for knowing when connections block due to slow HTTP
> clients so you can stop sending data back etc.
> 
> OSE at its core is actually C++, with Python wrappers. Thus, you are getting
> the efficiency of C++ but the simpler interfaces possible with Python.

I have a related question.  I come from a very high-scale, high-arrival
rate transactional computing background.  In this world, connection-oriented
solutions like RPCs across wide-area networks are a big "no no" for 
a variety of reasons.  (If you care more about why, I wrote a paper, years
ago, in grad school on this topic.  The specifics of the paper are quite
out of date, but the general critique' of RPCs is still very much relevant,
perhaps even moreso today with the proliferation of the internet.  You can
find it at: http://www.tundraware.com/RPCpaper/rpcpaper.pdf)  The short
reason for this is that connection-oriented solutions like RPCs create
very "brittle" applications in highly distributed, high-performance
environments.  I am thus less than enthusiastic about SOAP as a solution.

One really good alternative is transactional queuing with asynchronous
read/write interfaces to the queues.  I'm wondering if anyone is doing 
anything in this area with Python.




-- 
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Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com