I spent about 45 minutes hashing this out over the phone and I think the best solution (at least for our needs) is to make a lightweight JSON-RPC server that talks directly with the third-party API running in Python 2.4.4. Then we can run web2py on whatever Python version we want and just make JSON-RPC calls from web2py. This will also allow us to run the service and web2py application on two different servers if we need to (which was a concern).
This also frees us up from the restrictions that were imposed on us by the customized Python 2.4.4 environment that the API installs. Only thing is, we have to make sure the communication between web2py and the Python 2.4.4 service is done over SSL. So does anyone have any recommendations for a lightweight JSON-RPC server implementation that uses SSL and works under Python 2.4.4? P.S. I feel much better about this now since running web2py itself in Python 2.4.4 may no longer be a requirement for me.
