please comment on technologies

[luc wastiaux]

Hello, I am writing the specifications for a school project (the subject 
is free for us to choose), I was thinking about doing a news-server 
archive database just like google groups, but on a smaller scale (it would 
only archive a limited number of newsgroup, not all of USENET). I got this 
idea because my school uses a news server and a lot of valuable 
information is lost when old messages are erased from the server's spool.

The project would be developped by a group of 4 to 6 CS students 
(including me), over a three months timespan (but not full time, we have 
to go to classes and other stuff)

I have a small experience with web stuff, but mostly with PHP, and some 
perl. and I'm learning python right now.

I'm (almost) sure we will make use of python as the main language, and use
either Mysql or postgresql for the database (I'm familiar with mysql but
maybe it's too limited for what I want to do?). I just found out about
Spyce today and it looks like I could use it for the web interface.  

Then I have this idea about using XSL for templating, the idea is not only 
to separate the data from the representation, but also allow programmers 
to "leech off" the search engine (it's easier to do this if the output is 
XML).

Please comment on everything.. about the technological choices, and if 
you want to suggest any features that we should add to the project, please 
don't hesitate to tell me about it.

thanks a lot!

-- 
luc wastiaux
 $ finger luc at info.4002.org