Paige

An publisher for Enterprise Applications

Java™ developers have benefited from the J2EE™ standards (now often referred to as the Jacarta™ EE standards)for creating web applications since the start of the century.   The Java™ Servlet interface provides a mechanism to create feature rich applications that can be hosted by many commercially available webserver products, and Java™ Server Pages provide the ability for rapid application development.   Millions of Enterprise Applications have been developed using the J2EE™ standards which have been proven to be both mature and stable.

Developers implementing Enterprise Applications using the Python language have not had the benefit of J2EE™.   Without standards, multiple different frameworks have been evolving, each with their own features, security issues, and performance limitations.   While these frameworks promote rapid development at the start of a project, they can also produce a substantial maintenance nightmare as a project matures, as the cost to migrate from one framework implementation to another becomes prohibitively expensive.

Paige was created to bring many of the features of J2EE™ to Python developers. Python Servlets execute much the same way as Java™ Servlets, providing the same well known features (such as Sessions and Cookies) to application developers.   Enterprise applications can be created with Python Server Pages (PSPs) which function much the same as a Java™ Server Page (JSP).   PSPs, like their JSP counterparts, can include content, executable code, and Taglib extensions.

The Paige services offer more than publishing to a webserver, the services are available to developers who need the ability to publish to other destinations (such as email and reports).   Developers need not learn different frameworks for sending emails or creating reports.   Using paige it is possible to use the same PSP to interactively produce web pages or publish a report.

Features

• Rapid prototyping.
  Quickly create PSP files with embedded python content.   Client feedback is immediately available (PSP files are automatically compiled only as they are changed).
• Static content.
  Test or develop a complete application on one desktop.   Factor out static content during application development, as a first step to prepare for using a Content Domain Network (CDN) for enhanced performance.
• Tag libraries.
  Factor code completely out of a PSP through the use of Tag objects, resulting in applications that are easier to understand and easier to maintain.
• Servlets.
  Website controls (session management, request validation, and error recovery) can be performed by servlets, allowing application views to be rendered by PSP.
• Enterprise scalability.
  Proxy servlets can be used to physically separate website control (which may consume more than 80% of an application's CPU resource) from application server logic.   The paige is easily configured to run with Nginx or Apache, or it can be used separately to host an entire application.
• Portability.
  PSPs that have encapsulated all embedded Python code into taglibs can be migrated from piecon to other PSP implementations.   Similarly, JSPs using taglibs now have a migration path from Java™ and Jakarta Server Pages to Python.

Additional Information