ActivePython/IIS Request Concurrency

[Erik Rose]

First, thanks to everybody who's helped me with this problem,  
especially Robert Brewer, who continually provided encouragement that  
yes, my setup _can_ be made to work. :-)

Here's the beef: Python was acting serialized on my server because IIS  
goes to extra trouble to forcibly serialize _all_ ASP requests made by  
a given user within the scope of a given ASP "application". This  
applies equally to Python, PerlScript, VBScript, etc. and has nothing  
to do with Python per se. Isn't that fun? IIS sets a cookie (something  
like Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDSQCARCQR=PPBNINLCAPCFOCDHMNPGCCFB; path=/)  
on your first request and checks it on subsequent ones. It apparently  
keeps a separate queue of requests for each cookie, and no more than  
one ASP script requested by an identically-cookied browser is allowed  
to run at a time. Thus, as long as you turn off cookies or use a couple  
different browsers in your testing, everything is nicely concurrent. In  
the wild, obviously, it will be unproblematic because each user will  
get his own cookie. Phew!!  
(http://groups.google.com/groups? 
threadm=uopADcr%23DHA.4060%40TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl provided the needed  
breakthrough.)

Many thanks again to everybody who replied. I'm off to enjoy my lovely  
new language!

Cheers,
Erik Rose
Programmer/Analyst
Pennsylvania State University

P.S. Robert was reporting that his stuff runs concurrently no matter  
what he does. I'm guessing he either has cookies off or else has  
unchecked "Enable session state" in IIS Manager for that site. Either  
of these true, Robert?