I have been considering using Python and the Reportlab library for generating PDF reports for the back-end of a web based application. The application runs most of its background tasks on a dedicated server that is Windows based (Win2K or Win2k3). The program that launches the tasks requires a COM-based interface, so I wrote a Python COM server using Mark Hammond's PythonCom libraries and import and run the reporlab modules from there.
I had been reading up on Python and it's handling of the multiple threads, specifically the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL). I got to wondering if a multi-processor machine machine would be able to take advantage of its extra processing power using this setup. I am guessing that the GIL is global with respect to each instance of a running Python interpreter, so if say 4 interpreters were running, a 4 processor machine would be able to take advantage of this. However, I am not quite sure how launching my reports via COM behaves-- if I launched 4 reports this way, would that be like launching 4 seperate instances of the Python interpreter, or would it be just a single instance, and therefore run into the limitations of the GIL? If so, can anybody offer suggestions as to a design that would be better able to take advantage of a multi-processor machine? Thanks, Carl Waldbieser -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
