David Marko: Grails vs. Django vs. Web2Py

David Marko has very specific metrics in evaluating web frameworks. Peculiar to his development paradigm he intimates that his “primary concern, when evaluating the web frameworks, is how it can help me in developing apps for my many small clients. I’m not developing one or two big applications, but many small (maybe 30-40 different) for not one client but many different clients(companies) . Typical scenario for the client are the many apps that are developed within a few years. The applications must talk to each other in some way, must share common data and must be maintainable easily.”

On the following points, he evaluates Grails vs. Django vs. Web2Py:

”

• how to share authentication/authorization among applications
• how to share data, that are common for all applications (e.g. client’s info must be available for projects application and technical support app as well)
• how the data migration works? I need to work on development version of application, when approved just simply move application/database changes to production.  I need this for many clients so I need some flexible solution
• how the framework can collaborate with the other systems that clients are using usually (accounting system, proprietary applications) It mostly means ability to use some communication standard for data exchange(webservices, ODBC)”

Guess what he has to say about Web2Py?

”

• web2py approach is very inovative and old one together. Developer just starts the included wsgi server(cherrypy included) and can create and manage(develop) projects using web interface. Its very Zope like approach except that entire project is filesystem based, so user can use his favourite Python IDE. Different apps can communicate with each other, development  seems to be very fast at least for simple things.
• developer can run included wsgi server even for production and updates the apps without sacrificing the server restart. This allows nice development flexibility
• database schema migration is included
• the most common changes made to apps are immediately availabe without application redeployment or server restart required
• it’s Python based framework, so many Python libraries are available”

So, it looks like it’s Web2Py FTW! Check out the comments on his comparison.

posted by Paul “The Pageman” Pajo