Shawn McElroy <luckysm...@gmail.com> writes: > ... > So I need to find a way I can implement this in the best way...
It is in general very difficult to say reliable things about the "best" way. Because, that depends very much on details. My former employer has created a combo destop/online application based on "Zope". "Zope" is a web application framework, platform independent, easily installable, with an integrated HTTP server. It is one of the natural choices as a basis for a Python implemented web application. To get a desktop application, application and Zope was installed on the client system and a standard browser used for the ui. The main drawback of this scheme came from the limitations of the browser implemented ui. It has been very difficult to implement "deep integration" with the desktop (e.g. "drap & drop" in and out of the application; integration with the various other applications (Outlook, Word, ...)) and to provide "gimicks" provided by the surrounding environment. Thus, after 8 years, the application started to look old style and the browser based ui was replaced by a stand alone desktop application that talked via webservices with an online system (if necessary). Thus, *if* the ui requirements are fairly low (i.e. can fairly easily be implemented via a browser) you could go a similar route. If your ui requirements are high, you can replace the browser by a self developped (thick) ui application that talks via an abstraction with its backend. Properly designed, the abstraction could either be implemented by direct calls (to a local library) or by webservice calls (to an online service). This way, you could use your client application both for the (local) desktop only case as well as for the online case. Your description (stripped) suggests that you need special support for "offline" usage. The is separate functionality, independent of the desktop/online question. For example, highly available distributed database systems must provide some synchronization mechanism for resynchronization after temporary network connectivity loss. Another example: transactional systems must not lose transactions and can for example use asnychronous message queues to ensure that messages are safely delivered even in the case of temporary communication problems or failures. Thus, look at these aspects independent from the desktop/online szenario -- these aspects affect any distributed system and solutions can be found there. Those solutions tend to be complex (and expensive). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
