replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

**Peter Maas** · Jul 18 '05, 09:38 PM

Re: replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

Peter Maas schrieb:[color=blue]
> I have inherited an extremely messy ASP/VBScript application which
> is a pain for me to support. Now the customer is thinking about a
> redesign. I'd like to rewrite the whole thing in Python but the app
> has to meet some conditions like[/color]
[...]

Just noticed that this posting doesn't contain any questions. Here
they are:

Any comments? Has anybody done something comparable successfully and
give some advice?

Thanks in advance.

:)

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel +49-241-93878-0
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0 BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\ n'.decode('base 64')
-------------------------------------------------------------------

**Diez B. Roggisch** · Jul 18 '05, 09:38 PM

Re: replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

> Just noticed that this posting doesn't contain any questions. Here[color=blue]
> they are:
>
> Any comments? Has anybody done something comparable successfully and
> give some advice?
>
> Thanks in advance.[/color]

You did not really give much information of what your application does -
e.g. for a CMS, I'd strongly recommend a zope based solution. Other apps
might be better written in other frameworks.

--
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch

**Peter Maas** · Jul 18 '05, 09:38 PM

Re: replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

Diez B. Roggisch schrieb:[color=blue]
> You did not really give much information of what your application does -
> e.g. for a CMS, I'd strongly recommend a zope based solution. Other apps
> might be better written in other frameworks.[/color]

It's a procurement app. Users (employees) can search in a product list
and generate orders to the company's internal or external suppliers.
The orders are stored in a database and emails are generated to the
addresses of the buyer and the suppliers. There is no direct interface
to an erp app (like SAP).

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel +49-241-93878-0
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0 BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\ n'.decode('base 64')
-------------------------------------------------------------------

**Peter Maas** · Jul 18 '05, 09:38 PM

Re: replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

Peter Maas schrieb:[color=blue]
> I have inherited an extremely messy ASP/VBScript application which
> is a pain for me to support. Now the customer is thinking about a
> redesign. I'd like to rewrite the whole thing in Python but the app
> has to meet some conditions like
>
> - IIS frontend
> - MSSQL db server
> - Win32 authentication
> - No 'ugly' URLs like http://server/cgi-bin/frontend.cgi?main.py
> - Performance: intranet with ~ 1000 users[/color]

In the meantime I have searched the internet and found plenty of options:

- plain cgi with fastcgi and mod_rewrite for IIS to transform the URL
- quixote cgi with fastcgi and mod_rewrite
- Webware + wkcgi
- Python ASP (registering Python with Pywin32 as ASP language)
- mxODBC + SQL ODBC driver
- pyADO + SQL MDAC driver

I'm now confident that it is doable and keen on finding out. The usual
question: what is the one and best way to do it? ;)

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Peter Maas, M+R Infosysteme, D-52070 Aachen, Tel +49-241-93878-0
E-mail 'cGV0ZXIubWFhc0 BtcGx1c3IuZGU=\ n'.decode('base 64')
-------------------------------------------------------------------

**D H** · Jul 18 '05, 09:39 PM

Re: replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

Peter Maas wrote:[color=blue]
> Peter Maas schrieb:
>[color=green]
>> I have inherited an extremely messy ASP/VBScript application which
>> is a pain for me to support. Now the customer is thinking about a
>> redesign. I'd like to rewrite the whole thing in Python but the app
>> has to meet some conditions like
>>
>> - IIS frontend
>> - MSSQL db server
>> - Win32 authentication
>> - No 'ugly' URLs like http://server/cgi-bin/frontend.cgi?main.py
>> - Performance: intranet with ~ 1000 users[/color]
>
>
> In the meantime I have searched the internet and found plenty of options:
>
> - plain cgi with fastcgi and mod_rewrite for IIS to transform the URL
> - quixote cgi with fastcgi and mod_rewrite
> - Webware + wkcgi
> - Python ASP (registering Python with Pywin32 as ASP language)
> - mxODBC + SQL ODBC driver
> - pyADO + SQL MDAC driver
>[/color]

Can those do Windows authentication though? I guess you could with
Python ASP. If you really are stuck with ASP/IIS/Windows, then you
might find using boo or ironpython easier since they work with .NET.
I'm just saying it is an option, not that you shouldn't use CPython.
[color=blue]
> - I'd like to do session handling in Python because ASP's session
> object is quite limited and some of the ASP app's mess is caused
> by trying to use it for compound data type storage. OTOH I could
> pickle Python objects to a string and store that in an ASP session.[/color]

For storing complex data objects, instead of pickle, you can either use
..NET serialization: http://boo.codehaus.org/XML+Serialization
or db4objects, a GPL tool: http://www.db4o.com/
There is a sample of using boo with db4o here:

db4o boo object browser

http://db4oboobrowser.sourceforge.net/

Download db4o boo object browser for free. db4oboobrowser is a simple boo based object browser for db4o (http://www.db4o.com/) database files that allows you to view and manipulate your live objects either through a GUI or scripts written in the boo programming language (http://boo.codehaus.org/)

Or ORMs like Gentle.NET can work with MSSQL:

http://www.mertner.com/confluence/display/Gentle/Home

replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

replacing ASP/VBScript with Python

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment

Comment