Using Python for my web site

[Cameron Laird]

Re: Using Python for my web site

In article <1154382025.809 952.165190@b28g 2000cwb.googleg roups.com>,
northband <northband@gmai l.comwrote:

>Just spoke with my department and looks like we still want to go with a
>server scripting method. Although MVC may be better fit, for the sake
>of the learning curve, we want to use a PSP style method.

[Conrad]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:14:03 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

northband wrote:

>Hi, I am interested in re-writing my website in Python vs PHP but have a
>few questions. Here are my specs, please advise as to which
>configuratio n would be best:
>>
>1.Dell Poweredge Server, w/IIS, currently Windows but considering
>FreeBSD

>
I may be a bit biased, but I would not run a web server under Windows...
>

That's not biased - that's just good sense. When I started in
this business, there was a saying "Nobody ever got fired for
recommending IBM" - even though there were sometimes better
solutions, IBM was the politically safe choice. Windows has now
filled that niche, sadly. BSD is a hard sell in many shops,
and it has nothing to do with it's merits, which are considerable.
When you consider that you can build a BSD server with the
kernel stripped down to exactly the pieces you need, and load
only the packages you need, when you consider that the BSDs have
dominated the netcraft uptimes charts, one wonders just what
process is gone through to EVER select a Windows server platform.
I want, no, I demand a server to be secure, stable and efficient.
On all three criteria, Windows loses hands-down.

>2. Site consists of result pages for auctions and items for sale (100
>per page)
>3. MySQL (Dell Poweredge w/AMD) database server connected to my web
>server

>
Have you considered Postgresql instead ?
>

Ditto - I don't mind MySQL for serving up fairly static content,
but when the transactions get a bit more rough and tumble, I've
been very satisfied with PostgreSQL.

[Conrad]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:12:56 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

On 2006-07-31 15:00:15, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
>

>In fact, the real question IMHO is: what would MySQL advantage over
>PostgreSQL be ?-)

>
A few years ago I did some research, and the result was that while
PostgreSQL was claimed to have more features and a better design, the
reports of database corruption seemed to have been more frequent than with
MySQL. The usual reason given was that MySQL was more mature.
>
I assume you don't agree... :)
>
Gerhard

Maturity is an interesting word. The PostgreSQL pedigree
reaches back about thirty years, which in some peoples minds,
would constitute a degree of maturity. While I can't claim to
have done your extensive (and well documented) research, I can
say that I was a happy MySQL user a couple of years ago, using
it to quickly serve up fairly static content. Happy, that is,
until I put it into a more dynamic order entry/processing
environment. I started finding glitches - orphaned records -
one table totally corrupted. I found I was spending more and
more time coding to make sure the transactions completed, and
less time developing new code. I switched that client to
PostgreSQL and have had ZERO problems since. Many of the
"features" that MySQL is only now adding are playing catchup
to core data integrity values that PostgreSQL has had for much
longer, so it could be argued that in some areas, MySQL can
be said to be much less "mature".

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On 2006-08-01 21:04:07, Conrad wrote:

>A few years ago I did some research, and the result was that while
>PostgreSQL was claimed to have more features and a better design, the
>reports of database corruption seemed to have been more frequent than with
>MySQL.

I can't claim to have done your extensive (and well documented) research,

You maybe should consider new reading glasses. Or learn how to respond to
the correct message. Either you somehow got it all completely wrong, or you
responded to the wrong message.

Or is there something in PostgreSQL that makes its users acidic? :)

Gerhard

[Conrad]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On Tue, 01 Aug 2006 23:26:14 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

On 2006-08-01 21:04:07, Conrad wrote:
>

>>A few years ago I did some research, and the result was that while
>>PostgreSQL was claimed to have more features and a better design, the
>>reports of database corruption seemed to have been more frequent than
>>with MySQL.

>

>I can't claim to have done your extensive (and well documented)
>research,

>
You maybe should consider new reading glasses. Or learn how to respond to
the correct message. Either you somehow got it all completely wrong, or
you responded to the wrong message.
>
Or is there something in PostgreSQL that makes its users acidic? :)
>
Gerhard

Well, maybe so -

I followed up to this message:
Subject: Re: Using Python for my web site
From: Gerhard Fiedler <gelists@gmail. com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pytho n
Date: Mon, 31 Jul 2006 17:12:56 -0300

Which begins "A few years ago" and is signed Gerhard. It appears
that Bruno and Sybren did the same, no? Perhaps we could get a
referal for all of us to an optician for group rates?

Here's my issue - someone, who according to my defective newsreader
and clearly myopic eyes appeared to be you, once again invoked the
word research. Not only research, but results. I've done research.
It's a rigorous pain in the kiester, and it's seldom as black and
white as you hoped it would be going into the project. But due to
the blood I've donated to a couple of research projects, I would
hope that the words "research" and "results" carried some honest
syntactic weight. In other words, if I've done research, I would
hope it involved more than reading a couple of Linux Journal
articles, and a blog posting by some kid who's been serving up
pictures of his sister's kitties with MySQL for two years now with
no problems.

I haven't seen any significant research on PosgreSQL vs. MySQL
in an apples-to-apples, detached, no-axes-to-grind study. I
have seen a number of "tastes great" "less filling" studies.
I have seen MySQL bite me on the butt, more than once, and I'm
deeply attached to my butt, however anectdotal that may be.

But I'll have the honesty to not claim it's "research". Just
hands-on experience with a tool.

And no, PostgeSQL admins didn't get acidic using PostgreSQL,
which is proven to be calming, regrow hair, whiten your teeth
and improve stamina (it really does - I've done research on it).

We got that way from dealing with other DBs before we switched.

Cheers,

Conrad

[Cliff Wells]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On Tue, 2006-08-01 at 23:26 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

Or is there something in PostgreSQL that makes its users acidic? :)

Well, ACID is popular in PostgreSQL circles.

Cliff
--

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On 2006-08-02 00:51:28, Conrad wrote:

Which begins "A few years ago"

Exactly. Isn't this a good start for honesty? It doesn't claim to state
anything up to date.

It continues "I did some research", "some" being a very clear indicator
that I didn't consider this a thorough research. From the stated results of
this research it should be clear to any reasonable reader what kind of
research that was. "Claimed to have", "seemed to have" are not really
expressions that try to claim more than they are.

What does it mean to you when someone says "reports seemed to have been"?
Is that what you call "extensive (and well documented) research"? If so,
your standards don't really seem to be what you seem to say they are.

It appears that Bruno and Sybren did the same, no?

No. Neither Bruno nor Sybren got defensive or resorted to sarcasm.

Perhaps we could get a referal for all of us to an optician for group
rates?

Or for a few therapy sessions. There's no need to get defensive, just
because someone spent a day a few years ago reading documentation,
searching the web and newsgroups for experiences that people have with both
databases (like you and Cliff), got at that time the impression that what
those people reported (anecdotically -- that's all one can get without tons
of time and money to spend) was what I wrote it was, and stated this. I did
not overstate any of that, nor did I make it less subjective than it was.

So what's your problem? Why the sarcasm? "A blog posting by some kid who's
been serving up pictures of his sister's kitties with MySQL" -- again the
same sarcasm. Having a bad week?

Here's my issue - someone, who according to my defective newsreader and
clearly myopic eyes appeared to be you, once again invoked the word
research. Not only research, but results. I've done research.

Read the context. I didn't use the "r" word without context. You may not
like the word in that (very "light") context, but that's a personal issue,
and I couldn't really foresee it. The context was pretty clear, at least
for someone with a minimum of goodwill, wasn't it?

I haven't seen any significant research on PosgreSQL vs. MySQL in an
apples-to-apples, detached, no-axes-to-grind study.

Neither have I. I would have been glad to read it, at the time I needed to
decide between the two. So yes, it's all anectodical "evidence" (or is that
also too strong a word?). Hunting for that is the only form of research
someone like me (not a database admin, but in the need of selecting
databases for projects) can afford. I thought that was kind of understood.


BTW, compared to a lot of "research" that has the only function of
providing a paper to further the career of someone and "prove" some
preconceived notions, my (admittedly very light) research was done with
honesty, without predisposition towards any results and with the desire to
actually get results. I just spent on it what I could afford. That may not
be enough for everybody else's standards, but that's how I (and many
others) need to operate.

Maybe I could have used a more appropriate word. I just don't know one;
"research" was the closest I came up with.

Gerhard

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Re: Using Python for my web site

Conrad a écrit :

On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 19:14:03 +0200, Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
>
>

>>northband wrote:
>>

>>>Hi, I am interested in re-writing my website in Python vs PHP but have a
>>>few questions. Here are my specs, please advise as to which
>>>configuratio n would be best:
>>>
>>>1.Dell Poweredge Server, w/IIS, currently Windows but considering
>>>FreeBSD

>>
>>I may be a bit biased, but I would not run a web server under Windows...
>>

>
>
That's not biased

Well, actually, yes it is. Definitively.
<troll>
To make a long story short, my opinion is that the only sensible thing
to do with Windows is to wipe it out and install an OS instead. OTHO,
there are surely strong objective reasons for *not* using Windows - I
just don't feel like wasting my time finding them !-)
</troll>

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Re: Using Python for my web site

Luis M. González a écrit :
(snip).

I guess that the reason for not having used a framework already is
laziness...

Strange enough, laziness is my first reason for using frameworks ;-)

[Paul Boddie]

Re: Using Python for my web site

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

>
To make a long story short, my opinion is that the only sensible thing
to do with Windows is to wipe it out and install an OS instead.

If you're convinced you won't be running Windows, why deal with the
problem so late in the game? Instead, order a system from a vendor who
won't ship an operating system you aren't going to use. Otherwise,
we'll just keep hearing from vendors about there being no demand for
anything other than Windows, and thus supposedly no reason to offer any
real choice of operating systems.

Paul

P.S. One good reason for using something UNIX-like is the apparently
superior availability of Web and database server solutions for such
platforms, and Python works rather well with many of them, of course.

[Cliff Wells]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 10:46 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

On 2006-08-02 00:51:28, Conrad wrote:
>

Which begins "A few years ago"

>
Exactly. Isn't this a good start for honesty? It doesn't claim to state
anything up to date.
>
It continues "I did some research", "some" being a very clear indicator
that I didn't consider this a thorough research. From the stated results of
this research it should be clear to any reasonable reader what kind of
research that was. "Claimed to have", "seemed to have" are not really
expressions that try to claim more than they are.

I think the communication breakdown here is two-fold:

1) PostgreSQL fans are perhaps a bit paranoid about claims of MySQL
being better. There used to be a tiny bit of truth in this claim for
certain applications (mostly relating to performance and ease of use).
This makes them tend to read statements such as yours as an attack and
so you get defensive responses.
Also, comparing MySQL to PostgreSQL is a bit like comparing PHP to
Python: not even in the same class. PostgreSQL users probably consider
the whole comparison is a bit insulting to begin with, then to suggest
that MySQL *might* be better is practically a slap in the face ;-)

2) When you qualify statements with modifiers such as "some", "seemed",
etc, you are almost bound to be misinterpreted, since those modifiers
are apparently invisible on the net. I suspect most people scan
messages, taking away the main point but discarding all the nice words
the writer was so careful to write.
For future reference, if you don't know and intend to convey that you
don't, it's probably best to end your statement (no matter how carefully
qualified) with a clear statement that you are fishing for informative
responses.

For instance, were I to say (on this list):

"I've heard that Python is slow compared to PHP, and that many people
recommend PHP because it's hard to find hosting for Python apps
anyway.", I'd probably get a nice mix of both helpful replies and
extremely irritable ones, despite the fact I clearly qualified my
statements. Both of those statements were at least somewhat true at one
point and as such tend to invoke more passionate responses from Python
proponents. On the other hand, had I appended "So I'd like some other
opinions because I don't know." to the end, it would probably cut the
irritation down considerably (or at least be in a much more defensible
position if it didn't).

Regards,
Cliff

--

[Gerhard Fiedler]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On 2006-08-02 22:17:38, Cliff Wells wrote:

On the other hand, had I appended "So I'd like some other opinions
because I don't know." to the end, it would probably cut the irritation
down considerably (or at least be in a much more defensible position if
it didn't).

Thanks, that's one of the conclusions to which I also came. That final
question was missing, even though I felt it was implied. I really had no
clue that this is such a touchy subject.

Another one is that it seems (here I go again :) that there is something
like a marriage between Python and PostgreSQL (or in other words, that
Python fans that develop web apps have a tendency to favor PostgreSQL). Is
there something like this? (Here is the question :)

Gerhard

[Cliff Wells]

Re: Using Python for my web site

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 23:13 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

Thanks, that's one of the conclusions to which I also came. That final
question was missing, even though I felt it was implied. I really had no
clue that this is such a touchy subject.

Every opinion in technology seems to be touchy for someone ;-)

Another one is that it seems (here I go again :) that there is something
like a marriage between Python and PostgreSQL (or in other words, that
Python fans that develop web apps have a tendency to favor PostgreSQL). Is
there something like this? (Here is the question :)
>

I don't think so. If I had to venture an opinion, my impression has
been that the MySQL/PostgreSQL division lies more along the line between
web applications and other types of apps. For some reason, web people
seem to either prefer MySQL or (more likely) fall back to it as a
default. If there's a bias toward PostgreSQL in the Python crowd, I
suspect that's due to the fact that Python's presence seems to be more
weighted toward non-web programming relative to other languages (this
being due to Python's general applicability, not an implication Python
isn't suited for the web).

Regards,
Cliff

--

[paul kölle]

Re: Using Python for my web site

Cliff Wells wrote:

For myself, I handle user-installation of TurboGears pretty much like I
do all user-installed Python packages: using setuptools. Any user who
uses easy_install or 'python setup.py install' gets their packages
automatically installed into a subdirectory of their home directory and
that takes precedence over the system installed packages. Works like a
charm.

May I ask how you handle clashes with packages already installed in
site-packages? Once I tried something like ~/lib/python and set up
distutils accordingly, easy_install wouldn't work if the package was
installed system-wide...

thanks
Paul

[Paul Boddie]

Re: Using Python for my web site

Cliff Wells wrote:

On Wed, 2006-08-02 at 23:13 -0300, Gerhard Fiedler wrote:

Another one is that it seems (here I go again :) that there is something
like a marriage between Python and PostgreSQL (or in other words, that
Python fans that develop web apps have a tendency to favor PostgreSQL). Is
there something like this? (Here is the question :)

Take a look at Harald Armin Massa's EuroPython talk abstract for
evidence of "something like a marriage":

http://indico.cern.ch/contributionDisplay.py?contribId=0&sessionId=41&confId=44

Where are the slides, Harald? ;-)

I don't think so. If I had to venture an opinion, my impression has
been that the MySQL/PostgreSQL division lies more along the line between
web applications and other types of apps. For some reason, web people
seem to either prefer MySQL or (more likely) fall back to it as a
default.

I'd argue that since MySQL was reportedly easier to install on Windows
than PostgreSQL until relatively recently (ie. until a few years ago),
and that MySQL appealed to the lightweight database system niche that
mSQL occupied a few years before that, people didn't hesitate to
install it in situations where just considering installing something
else might have put them off. Meanwhile, PostgreSQL has been around for
so long that it probably has a place in the hearts of people who
remember the era when you'd use UNIX for serious research or enterprise
endeavours and where PostgreSQL was the best open source tool for the
task. Of course, most GNU/Linux distributions have packaged both of
them for some time.

If there's a bias toward PostgreSQL in the Python crowd, I
suspect that's due to the fact that Python's presence seems to be more
weighted toward non-web programming relative to other languages (this
being due to Python's general applicability, not an implication Python
isn't suited for the web).

I'd like to hope that it's because Python people stop to consider the
established alternatives rather than following the stampede to the
latest "hot product".

Paul