The rise of WSGI and the many server implementations is really great. I've configured some combinations of webservers and WSGI servers that are very fast and reliable. Now that there's a good standard for Python web applications to build on, there is an opportunity to create a standard for very easy deployment and administration.
Consider the common scenario where an administrator is responsible for half a dozen or more applications, each for a different department within a company. Instead of having each application configure its own settings for mail servers, database connections and the administrator needing to configure and install various CherrPy, Pylons, Turbogears, etc WSGI files and dependencies, it would be nice if each application, regardless of framework, could be deployed as a single file archive. The SMTP and database settings could be configured once for all applications and even application specific configuration could be configured by the administrator using a single interface. In addition, it would provide statistics about the applications and allow them to be restarted individually, again from a uniform interface. It would provide services that the applications could access through a standard interface. Mail, database, temporary files, persistent storage location. etc. It should work with any WSGI application, but an application could opt to take advantage of the services offered. An application server like this could do wonders for getting Python applications into the typical enterprise (I hate to that word, but it's very appropriate here). And yes, if my description sounds like Tomcat, that's what I had in mind. It would of course interface with a web server and probably have its own HTTP server, but you'd only have to go through that setup once instead of once per application. What it means in the end is that after this hypothetical application server is set up, a new application can be deployed by uploading a single file archive. For a single application deployment, it's not so useful, but when deploying and managing multiple applications, it could be a godsend to administrators and as a result to developers that work with them. And best of all, it could break down barriers to getting Python web applications into enterprise environments. I haven't come across any current efforts to develop something like this and I'm finishing something else at the moment. So I wrote this post to document my thoughts, see if there is any interest and possibly get a discussion going. -Randall _______________________________________________ Web-SIG mailing list Web-SIG@python.org Web SIG: http://www.python.org/sigs/web-sig Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/web-sig/archive%40mail-archive.com
