Python good for data mining?

[Jens]

> > What if I were to use my Python libraries with a web site written in
> > PHP, Perl or Java - how do I integrate with Python?
>
> Possibly the simplest way would be python .cgi files.  The cgi and cgitb
> modules allow form data to be read fairly easily.  Cookies are also
> fairly simple.  For a more complicated but more customisable approach,
> you could look in to the BaseHTTPServer module or a socket listener of
> some sort, running that alongside the webserver publicly or privately.
> Publicly you'd have links from the rest of your php/whatever pages to
> the python server.  Privately the php/perl/java backend would request
> data from the local python server before feeding the results back
> through the main server (apache?) to the client.

Thanks a lot! I'm not sure I completely understand your description of
how to integrate Python with, say PHP. Could you please give a small
example? I have no experience with Python web development using CGI.
How easy is it compared to web development in PHP?

I still havent't made my mind up about the choice of programming
language for my data mining project. I think it's a difficult
decision. My heart tells me "Python" and my head tells me "Java" :-)