Why use AOLserver (and PyWX)?

Maintained by Titus Brown

AOLserver is a threaded Web server that maintains persistent database connections, thus reducing two of the biggest sources of overhead in the serious Web business: starting a new process for each CGI script, and connecting to the database for each process. It also has a full, uncrufty programming language tightly knit to its internals: Tcl.

AOLserver has also been around since at least 1995, and is being used for many extremely high-volume Web sites. Most notably, ArsDigita has been using it for many years.

Unfortunately, AOLserver has suffered not only from the AOL in its name but from its adoption of the Tcl scripting language, which, while better than PHP and other scriptlet languages, is not really taken seriously by anyone other than Tcl programmers and Philip Greenspun.

Hence, PyWX, which adds a full, object-oriented, thread-safe language - Python - into the mix. Now there's no reason not to use AOLserver!

Other opinions, more details:

Everyone has strong opinions about their favorite software. Here are some people's opinions for your reading pleasure. In conclusion...

As one advocate said,

the really exciting thing about PyWX is that it joins 2 very mature, robust technologies in an appropriate way.
That's enough of tooting our own horn, though; if you try PyWX and don't like it, we'll return the price of the software ;).