[pyswarm-devs] Brief update

[Anastasios H. <ah...@ha...>]

Hi guys!

Before discussing the GUI features and other aspects of pyswarm I would lik=
e=20
to refresh the context and give you a short update.

pyswarm Applications:

I excpect that pyswarm will be mainly used in the domain of modern, n-tier=
=20
business applications: Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship=
=20
Management, Order Management etc. Other fields are possible where=20
applications depend on databases, f. e. document and content management=20
systems or groupware solutions. It is less likely that pyswarm will be usef=
ul=20
for development of strongly mathematical, technical, scientific, multi-medi=
a,=20
hardware-related or real-time applications. Users would typically be small=
=20
and medium sized organizations or solution providers acting on their behalf=
=2E=20
I will post a suggestion of components separately soon.


Architecture:

Business components of a pyswarm application are written in Python and can =
run=20
on all platforms with standard Python distribution. If necessary an user=20
should be able to distribute the components over network on different hosts=
=20
(XMLRPC?). Furthermore a business component should be able to access its=20
corresponding PostgreSQL database on the local host or on a remote host=20
(preferrably encrypted connection).


Interfaces:

Each business component should provide an interface so clients can access i=
t.=20
Clients can be:
a) command-line scripts (kind of those command scripts of which the pyswarm=
=20
SDK consists),=20
b) text-only user-interfaces (e.g. Python curse),=20
c) graphical user-interfaces / GUI (e.g. wxPython/wxWidgets, Tkinter,=20
pyQt/Qt),=20
d) Web-based interfaces (e.g. Apache+mod_python, Pylons, Django, TurboGears=
),=20
e) other pyswarm business components acting as a client of one pyswarm=20
business component (n-tier architecture),=20
f) or 3rd-party components (e.g. Python based libraries and packages such a=
s=20
Mailman; OpenOffice.org).

As you may remember I preferred to go with wxPython as default=20
framework/tool-kit for graphical user-interfaces (GUIs) generated by pyswar=
m=20
SDK.

Note: pyswarm should have some common libraries, so application developers =
are=20
free to choose another wxPython-based GUI concept or even a GUI based on a=
=20
different framwork/tool-kit. However, for the beginning pyswarm SDK should=
=20
support (semi-)automatic generation only for a single type of GUI.

It would be great if we can develop a strong GUI concept. I think that mode=
rn,=20
intuitive user-interface is one of the keys for the success of any software=
=2E=20
Actually it's (too) often the only way for an end-user to rate the software.

Best regards,
Anastasios