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Does Python scale for heavy web loads?

echuck3 at my-deja.com echuck3 at my-deja.com
Thu Sep 7 23:55:46 EDT 2000 
In article
<E3D70C8D5FF96352.64E87CAA9CF729AB.A91049D8BD58B210 at lp.airnews.net>,
  tseaver at starbase.neosoft.com (Tres Seaver) wrote:
> In article <8p85rh$hmi$1 at nnrp1.deja.com>,  <markhaliday at my-deja.com>
wrote:
> >Question: Using Python as a CGI and running it under Apache, would
> >Python realistically be able to handle 5,000 hits an hour and not
> >degrade performance?  With Python's threading, (ex: using a
Default.py
> >script as an example) I call Default.py to render some information,
> >only one thread runs Default.py right?  No other people can hit
> >Default.py until Default.py finishes with its original request and
> >serving the information back...Correct?
>
> "Plain-ole" CGI is not your best scalability candidate;  the overhead
> of starting the Python interpreter for each request is *much* too
> high.
>
> What you want is a long-running process (e.g., Zope), to which Apache
> delegates the request, or else to get the Python interpreter embedded
> somehow in the Apache process ("mod_python", if that beast is
available).
> [snip]

Two other options include:

* Webware for Python: http://webware.sourceforge.net
* FastCGI: http://www.fastcgi.com

Both will give you about an order of magnitude performance increase
(give or take) because you shave away the python interpreter start up
and various module loading. You can also improve your scripts by
caching connections and/or things you compute.

-Chuck


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