django issues

i’ve been able to read a bit more about django. overall, my impression is definitely positive, but not perfect.

production installation is a bit confusing. definitely not as simple as ‘java -jar ‘. the recommended production setup is using apache with mod_python (embeds the python interpreter within apache). that’s probably not too bad once you get it setup. apache is used for serving any static media files like images, css and javascript. that means you have to copy your code in one place and your media in another. how to configure the urls in your app also isn’t straight forward. there is a python based webserver for development, but for whatever reason is not deemed worthy of production usage. i don’t know what, if any, roadblocks there may be to producting a production python webserver. i haven’t seen anything about using it with i.i.s. on windows, but why would you want to do something stupid like that? at some point do people want to stop beating their head against a wall?
as far as database table upgrades, they mention doing the alter table commands by hand. supposedly, a future version (maybe the 1.0) will support a way to automatically generate the alter statements to run. not really any different from what we (and by ‘we’ i mean other people than me) do now i suppose.

while the authentication and authorization seems ok (very similar in functionality and tables as are current framework), it’s not extensible. you have to do some hackery if you want to authenticate to somewhere else like ldap, kerberos or some other crap home-made authentication web service (you know who you are).

there’s not really a plugin/service style framework either. i think similar funcionality can be done by implementing different ‘apps’ that you can install within different sites/projects.

can the existing framework we’re using at doozer really still be that good after 5+ years? i’m not just saying that because i wrote large parts of it;^) the major downside of it, for me at least, is its dependency on the proprietary java.

so what are the other key differences? i think django could be easier to write something quickly, definitely good for prototyping. i like how the model objects are the single definition of the business objects and automatically handles all the sql for you. it’s hard to say if the droid/record style interface is better. it is possible to directly write sql in django and to reverse engineer an existing database to get an object interface. it has a templates for html generation instead of our widget/component style api. this could be a plus or minus depending on how you want to look at it. there’s nothing tying it to using templates though. a similar widget api could be written.

the documentation is still not quite fully there (not that our documentation even exists). a book is supposedly in the works. i think i may plow on with django and try it for the app i want to write. there’s not really another way to truly test something. i suppose i will want to try getting the tutorial app working behind apache as a next step. the key piece of documentation that i think is missing is a good explanation of how to write apps that are portable between projects. they have a start, but it’s still a work in progress.