From: mcannon at 21stcentury.net (Michael J. Cannon)
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 23:40:19 -0500
Subject: Python and Nutcracker
References: <370B62F2.93D76301@oi42.kwu.siemens.de>
Message-ID: <3712CAB2.77A5AF2B@21stcentury.net>
Content-Length: 1650
X-UID: 10                                                 

Dr Tschammer:

Speaking from experience, both in supporting (independently of
DataFocus) and porting, all I can say is be careful of the I/O and
exception handling in the Nutcracker, especially when addressing issues
involved in Winsock and calls to any messaging .dll's or libraries.
Also, your users will have to disable the Nutcracker service manually
when doing backups from NT databases on the server (especially SQL
server and Oracle) and then manually restart, as cron and at -type calls
are problematic with the Nutcracker services running.  Finally, license
WinBatch for your customers/users as they will need it.

Personally, I have given up on Nutcracker as support is both expensive
and a nightmare of frustrated users.  My preferred platform is now Java
(via javat) or a mix of c (GNU C or C+/++) and python.

For a taste of what you're in for as far as support, check out the EDI-L
mailing list and watch for messages on Harbinger's TLE product (formerly
UNIX PREMENOS), or see if you can't get in contact with someone who will
honestly critique NUWC's efforts (prominently featured on the DataFocus
site).

My feeling is that Nutcracker was a good idea with a rushed
implementation.  With all the faults of NT, to depend on a set of
libraries existing as a service, poorly implemented, is asking for
trouble.

"Dr. Armin Tschammer" wrote:

> Hi,
> Has anyone experience with Python and Nutcracker ?
> We are using embedded Python in our application which
> is developed under HPUX.
> We are now porting our application to Windows NT
> with the help of the Nutcracker library.
> Has anyone already done such stuff ?
>
>       Armin





