Re: django as a platform for a commercial SaaS project?
On Mar 24, 4:59 pm, "walterbyrd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > SaaS = Software as a service, just in case that was not clear. > > If I wanted to create commercial quality hosted software, would django > be the best solution? The sort of things I have in mind would be very > database oriented, and involve a lot of forms and reports. I would > like to be able to easily customize the software. > > As much as I dislike microsoft, I wonder if I would be more productive > with ASP.NET? hey, I'm a bit new to the whole Python thing in terms of knowing all the libraries around the net, so I hope the other people on the list forgive me if I say something stupid or just correct me right away. Personally (and of course from my totally objective and uninfluenced point-of-view ;-) ) I'd look at what Django *doesn't* give you and see if it's important for your project. I think the "big" platforms like Java with Tapestry/JSF or ASP.Net with WebForms have everything and the kitchen sink and Django, or Python for that matter, hasn't had that kind of exposure yet. So here's a few technical checkpoints: * do you need very fine-grained authorization controls (i.e. row or attribute level) in the application or do you need to integrate enterprisey hand-waving stuff like XACML or SAML? * do you need strong PDF support (like flowing two columns of text over multiple pages with headlines, or Adobe Forms-support or even digital signatures)? (There doesn't seem any Python library that can match Lowagie's iText(.Net)) * are there very high performance requirements or enormous amounts of data? (i.e. management doesn't care if it's expensive, they only care if their flashy dashboard is really fast and you have to process huge result-sets in a data warehouse to create your reports) * can you profit extensively from ready-made components for a component-oriented framework? (Django's admin is *great* and generic views rock, but if your application presents a few hundred lines of database rows in a spreadsheet-like manner, nothing beats dragging a GridView from a toolbar and connecting it visually to a ADO.Net dataset and be done with it unless there is some equivalent to that or Tapestry's contrib:table and I haven't found it yet) * do you need to consume .Net-based web-services or do you need strong support for the WS-* stack? * do you need to integrate legacy database(s) and anticipate that there is a lot of character-set handling and character-set conversion comint? (Judging from the coming "unicodization" and that Django seems to require that the database and the templates share a character-set, I'd say that it not its strongest point right now. However, someone's proving me wrong at this instant probably... Python however would support this requirement just fine). * do you need to work with a database that Django doesn't support, yet? (assuming you don't have time to write and contribute a driver ;-) ) A month ago I'd have talked about how full-text search might be important, but thanks to PyLucene this problem is solved (and there's a project called DjangoStuff that can be patched so the search-part works). And here's a few management checkpoints: * do you already have Python-knowledge in-house? * are the people in charge of the servers capable of running Python in a predictable manner? (i.e. not "installing from ActiveState's .exe and clicking restart", but "running it for at least 4 weeks with full backup-protocols and a clear idea of what module versions are in production and what they're last few security-holes were") * can you live with the coming changes in Django and can you afford to forward-port your application? ASP.Net will be supported in its current version for a long time, Django won't until it hits 1.0 and then (no offense) other frameworks have not exactly be the poster- children of backwards-compatibility, you'll have to hope Django's different. Assuming that your reporting-application will run for 5 years, you'll either have to patch it or be very careful security-wise because an upgrade or two will definitely come up in this time-frame. >From the top of my head, these would be the main points I'd consider if I wanted to adopt Python/Django. What you don't get with ASP.Net is a lot of fun coding. Django is very elegant, but that also means most of the buzzwords are missing. (something like Displaytag for JSP however, is bound to happen in the next 3 months :-) ). That said, we're using Django extensively now alongside PHP and Java and it's by far the most productive platform and the missing pieces seem to be arriving fast (see PyLucene, the auth-branch, the schema migration-branch, unicodization). I hope I was able to help you a bit. Best regards from Germany, Jonas --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to
Re: django as a platform for a commercial SaaS project?
Hi Walter. On Mar 24, 3:59 pm, "walterbyrd" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > If I wanted to create commercial quality hosted software, would django > be the best solution? The sort of things I have in mind would be very > database oriented, and involve a lot of forms and reports. I would > like to be able to easily customize the software. > > As much as I dislike microsoft, I wonder if I would be more productive > with ASP.NET? For what it's worth, I spent the last couple of years developing in ASP.NET and the last couple of months developing in Django and I find I'm much more productive in Django. It's hard to say if Django is the "best solution" for your particular app, but there aren't any obvious reasons why it wouldn't do a good job in a SaaS situation. Using newforms is definitely a timesaver when your app has a lot of forms and Django doesn't seem to have any problems with scalability. If you have specialised requirements for security or audit/repudiation type stuff you'll need to figure out how to do what you want, but that's true of any web framework and mostly comes down to your design. Scott Scott --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: django as a platform for a commercial SaaS project?
> If I wanted to create commercial quality hosted software, would django > be the best solution? it depends! --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: django as a platform for a commercial SaaS project?
Lee Hinde wrote: > > > On Mar 24, 8:03 pm, John DeRosa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> walterbyrd wrote: >>> SaaS = Software as a service, just in case that was not clear. >> What's the difference between SaaS and an ASP? I don't quite get the >> distinction between them. > > The ASP provides the SaaS. Yes and no. The term "ASP" existed before "SaaS" came on the scene. I think ASPs were selling something to their customers before SaaS was "invented." The point of my original post was that the meaning of ASP and SaaS, and whether there's any real difference between them, depends on who's doing the talking. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: django as a platform for a commercial SaaS project?
On Mar 24, 8:03 pm, John DeRosa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > walterbyrd wrote: > > SaaS = Software as a service, just in case that was not clear. > > What's the difference between SaaS and an ASP? I don't quite get the > distinction between them. The ASP provides the SaaS. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: django as a platform for a commercial SaaS project?
walterbyrd wrote: > SaaS = Software as a service, just in case that was not clear. What's the difference between SaaS and an ASP? I don't quite get the distinction between them. John --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
django as a platform for a commercial SaaS project?
SaaS = Software as a service, just in case that was not clear. If I wanted to create commercial quality hosted software, would django be the best solution? The sort of things I have in mind would be very database oriented, and involve a lot of forms and reports. I would like to be able to easily customize the software. As much as I dislike microsoft, I wonder if I would be more productive with ASP.NET? --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django users" group. To post to this group, send email to django-users@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-users?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
