Ramble

Presented by: David Stanek

This was a short presentation, but it gave me a lot of ideas for projects. Python is a language that I’ve wanted to learn more about for a long time, but haven’t had the time to dive into. I’ve only developed a tiny bit with it and even then, mostly by editing existing scripts.

This presentation focused on how Python can be integrated into an Enterprise envronment and used to create “Enterprise” systems (e.g. Accounting, Digital Asset Management, etc.). Python was presented as OO, somewhat functional, and very procedural, but ultimately unconstrained and flexible. A lot of tools were mentioned.

I am particularly interested in looking at Stream and the python library for it since the Rich Media Converter Project does have some need for more robust message passing and uses asynchronous subsystems that could benefit from such a technology. Also, the libraries that allow Python to connect to directory services like LDAP and AP seem excellent and I’ll have to investigate them further. One of the hard things about the RMCP is getting authentication to work well since the LDAP server lacks role information and we didn’t have a good library for connecting to the AD via Perl.

With the advent of Jython and IronPython (especially), I think I can start using Python right away in some projects at work to try it out. Talked to David after the talk, he said they have experimented a little with IronPython at his company and found that the assemblies produced were easily integrated into their existing Python apps. So, I think the opposite approach (pure Python -> .NET via IronPython) should work for me. I can’t wait to try it out.