After a brief, but informative, discussion on Freenode's #zope chatroom, I was advised to consult the gurus on c.l.p.
I'm working for a small company who is in desperate need to rewrite it's 15+ year old, flat-file, client-tracking database. The staff uses OSX, while I administer the couple linux servers we have to run our website and some internal sites. In our initial brainstorming session, we decided to go with a Python backend server, handling the database and business logic, and a native Cocoa application on the client side, with enough glue to make the two stick. Also, after a bit of research, I discovered Twisted and PB. I figured I'd have to write a customized backend to meet our needs. However, seeing as how 1) I've never written a netwo rk application before, let alone a multi-threaded application and 2) I'm the sole developer on this project, I was looking for as many API's, modules, frameworks, and/or prebuilt solutions as possible to help me out. I initially thought of Zope because I had often heard it referred to as an application serv er, so I thought it might be something I could use as a basis, write the business logic, and have the Cocoa application, with some PyObjC, communicate with the Zope server. We're definately not looking for a web-based application, so I wasn't quite sure Zope was what I wa nted. For those that are interested, we're looking at using MySQL as the DBMS. >From what little I know of OODBMS it doesn't seem like the right choice because aside from data entry and client record lookups, the biggest use of the database would be to generate reports and tabulated data on an arbitrary set of fields. I've read that this isn't exactly the strength of OODBMS? We are also looking at a server-client architecture, rather than individual clients connecting to the database over the network, because there are some features the staff would like (such as something similar to message passing between each other, and also being able to administer connected users). Does anyone here have any experience building an OSX application with Python running the show behind the scenes? I hope I didn't come off as asking "tell me what to do", but rather I would appreciate any advice or links to resources that might be helpful in this project. Thanks for your time! Socheat -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
