web guru advise needed.

[Raaijmakers, Vincent (IndSys,GE Interlogix)]

Looking at all the materials available, books, technologies etc etc..
I try to make a decision on what technology to select for a web server design, but I need help.

I know, this question has been asked many many times sorry about that, but please help me.
My desk is full with printouts and books, I'm getting a stack overflow.

Currently the existing design is using JSP's.
Now, most of the business logic of behind this application is database and image processing driven. This part of the code is in a design phase, not coding. Looking at the design, python would be very powerful. I'm afraid that java will kill the performance + development time here.
But how to make the link between my JSP and python business logic. Jython is still at the python 2.1 level.
Looking at the libraries, the use of Python 2.3 seems for me more a must.

The web server requirements I'm looking at are:

1) simple presentation layer processing. The HTML pages produced by server will be more focused on presenting images (dynamic), rather that fancy tables, frames, buttons.
2) the framework has to be robust and FAST on performance.
3) runs only on Linux, well not really a requirement, more a statement.
4) runs on Apache (and/or Tomcat)

What technology gives me the best performance?
I'm so afraid that adapters like WebKit kills my performance but because of my jsp experience, psp seems the best option.

Vincent

 

[Eric Williams]

1) simple presentation layer processing. The HTML pages produced by server
will be more focused on presenting images (dynamic), rather that fancy
tables, frames, buttons. 2) the framework has to be robust and FAST on
performance. 3) runs only on Linux, well not really a requirement, more a
statement. 4) runs on Apache (and/or Tomcat)

What technology gives me the best performance?
I'm so afraid that adapters like WebKit kills my performance but because
of my jsp experience, psp seems the best option.

Vincent

FWIW, I recently complete a CMS project with the following constellation:

1) Apache with mod_python
2) PostgreSQL for content storage, mostly in the form of blob'd Pickles
3) Templating using SimpleTAL (elegant and leightweight, but requires some
downright heinous URLs)
4) Everything running behind Squid in accelerator mode

It's pretty dang snappy on performance, but you'd need a dedicated
server/processor for dynamic images, I would think.

cya,
Eric

 

[Cameron Laird]

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The web server requirements I'm looking at are:

1) simple presentation layer processing. The HTML pages produced by
server will be more focused on presenting images (dynamic), rather that
fancy tables, frames, buttons.
2) the framework has to be robust and FAST on performance.
3) runs only on Linux, well not really a requirement, more a statement.
4) runs on Apache (and/or Tomcat)

What technology gives me the best performance?

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I hope I've misunderstood your intent. When I first read this,
the impression it makes is that you have an interest only in the
one Apache-based Web server with "the best performance". For
practical use, I think a far more satisfying approach is to look
for a system which is robust, high in performance, and maintain-
able, and *measure* its performance in a test environment to
estimate whether it is fast enough. "Fast enough" can be a
considerably more useful criterion than "fastest possible".

 

[Alex Martelli]

Raaijmakers, Vincent (IndSys, GE Interlogix) wrote:
...

that java will kill the performance + development time here. But how to
make the link between my JSP and python business logic. Jython is still at
the python 2.1 level. Looking at the libraries, the use of Python 2.3
seems for me more a must.

Python and Java may be able to intercommunicate, as an altenrative to
Jython, with JPE, http://sourceforge.net/projects/jpe -- I don't know
much about it, but perhaps it fits your needs.

What technology gives me the best performance?

Probably Twisted, but it doesn't meet your requirements (it's a
separate stand-alone webserver, not running on top of Apache).

I'm so afraid that adapters like WebKit kills my performance but because

Why are you afraid of that? Have you run some benchmarks? In my
(admittedly limited) experience, Webkit's performance has been quite good.

If you need or want to run closer to the bare metal, you can try mod_python,
but you may end up coding more "adapters" and infrastructure yourself. I
surely wouldn't want to make a performance-critical choice without some kind
of benchmarking among plausible alternatives to support me!!!

of my jsp experience, psp seems the best option.

I've often found that templating (e.g., Cheetah, CherryPy, and so on
and so forth) can be more satisfactory in many situations, because it
allows graphical designers who aren't programmers to prepare and change
the "looks" of things, while programmers are allowed to do what they
do best (that it, _program_, rather than improvising themselves as the
graphics artists that, in most cases, they aren't....


Alex

 

[Robert Church]

Probably Twisted, but it doesn't meet your requirements (it's a
separate stand-alone webserver, not running on top of Apache).

If you want to use Apache, consider using the mod_proxy module, which
effectively lets you serve Twisted through Apache. It gives you the
best of both worlds, and is generally a wonderful strategy for
integrating all kinds of web and application servers.

 

[Brad Clements]

I'm not a guru, I just play one on TV

I've been using Zope for one of my client's projects for quite a while. It's
Apache on the front end, Zope and Interbase (soon SAPDB) on the backside.

Originally I used DTML for templating, then moved to Page Templates, and now
I'm moving to xml and xslt. I use libxml2 and libxslt in Zope to generate
the HTML on the server, but if the client supports xml/xslt then I just ship
the xml to it.

This seems to give me the best performance. However the .xslt files can be
tough to work with. Basically, Zope is now just glue and access control.
It's much simpler now and I like it!