>>The truth is that http serving software is better located on "open source"
>>in most cases. But intensive graphical apps are and (my opinion only)
>>will remain a proprietary resource for a while. Win32 clearly belongs to MS.
>
>Many applications need a business layer that can serve both a Win32 app and a Browser, this is where COM shines. Are Python modules accessible from a Win32 application? Is there growing support for Web Services via Python modules?

Yes you can COM from/to win32 python but that defeats ability to run on multiple platforms (an incredible bonus if you think twice about it).

I like windows for ui, printing services, ocx. But we ran into too much instability and complexity (ISAPÏ...) when developping our web services on iis.

We gained enormously in stability when we moved our foxisapi scripts onto apache+mod_python. I am sure you never rebooted an iis server gone mad with com objects floating around or memory leaking... But here in Europe we do. It is just not acceptable.

Visibily has improved as well (no "will they kill fox/vb" syndrome anymore).

As an example we designed our htttp production code as plain cgi. It was slow but useful. When we decided to move up to in-server solutions (a la isapi) we choose the apache/mod_python combo that we can now run on win32 or unix.

Ran like a charm but, if we did not like it or need to run on other platforms (cheaper with linux or most costly with high-end proprietary unixes as you wish) we could have with little modification run our code as:

- mod_snake (an alternative way to run high-speed within apache),
- a servlet in the open-source webware application server (works most web servers incl. ms iis),
- a fastcgi app (unix only),
- PyWX (a Python interpreter embedded into AOLserver),
- a xitami long process (a trimmed-down fastcgi-like)...

This choice is a dream come true as most of those tools are free or nearly so.

Of course i would like to have an opportunity to code an effective "business layer" to be reused by both web and win32 apps... but it will not be com-based.

Our applications keep a common repository (a multiplatform db engine) on a machine and run :
- intensive UI on windows,
- web services on apache (windows or unix),

Possibly SOAP (see http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&th=8acd8e5bad6fc003aaqq) or xml/rpc will help us develop a common "business rootage" for both web services and intensive UI when those technologies have matured.

Possibly .Net has an edge in this respect but do you have fun with all those crashing multi-cd betas ? Do you remember when you last had fun with programming tools?

I do. Visicalc, plain old C, Foxbase 1.x, Smalltalk and... python.

Check python 2.0 (a few megs to download from activestate.com - do not forget mxODBC extensions). It is easy, simple and absolutely no unix brainstaker (o'reilly "learning python" recommended though).

You may not decide to use it but you will like it and learn something useful by the way. Money back guaranteed!

Have fun

François