Web Application Server in Python: which one to choose ?

[Paul Boddie]

"Thomas Weholt" <thomas at gatsoft.no> wrote in message news:<x_Jk7.625$fY6.180200448 at news.telia.no>...
>

[...]

> to invest more time and possibly money. How you like to work, if you like
> using *SP-based solutions like DHTML in Zope and PSP and Webware etc. will
> also play a big part in deciding what package you want to use. I think
> Webware and Zope work just fine if you're way of working is compatible with
> the concept behind one of those packages.

Firstly, I think it's an oversimplification to put DTML in the same
camp as *SP technologies, and it's certainly worth noting that Webware
supports a number of presentation technologies:

  http://webware.sourceforge.net/Papers/Templates/

Secondly, I don't think that Webware is too demanding in terms of
ideology or design. I have my own ideas about how Web applications
should be developed, and these have evolved substantially over time,
but I found it much easier to reconcile them with Webware's way of
working and to stop worrying about the tedious low-level
"infrastructure" details of server-side development.

For me, Webware is a package which provides what I would really expect
from Python's standard library in terms of support for developing Web
applications. It provides a layer of abstraction which is more useful
and gets one started quicker than, for example, Python's "cgi" module;
with that module, there's still a lot of work that one needs to do to
build a real application, whereas Webware provides a much better
starting point.

> I found Zope too complex, almost bloated, Webware was interesting and showed
> alot of promise, but failed to invoke serious interest. I've started
> developing my own application server based on Medusa and take parts of the
> concept behind Zope, Webware, other Java-based application servers like
> Tomcat and Enhydra and it's coming along nicely, soon becoming ready for a
> beta-release. I wanted 100% control of my code, complete seperation of
> design and code, "web-components", simpler user/access-management etc. and
> at the same time learn how it all worked, that's why I decided to create a
> new project.

I look forward to adding it to my Web modules overview:

  http://www.paul.boddie.net/Python/web_modules.html

One of the things that I might do with that document is to make the
assessment criteria more relevant. Some of them don't really say
enough about the nature of certain frameworks or systems, and certain
issues aren't really addressed at all: database system integration,
threading/process models, "real world" deployment considerations...

Paul