Filed under: aop, movie — gregturn @ 9:17 pm
I couldn’t resist using this website to put together a little movie. What is better than a couple of robots discussing aspect oriented programming in python? (This was based on my earlier post The Case forAOP in Python)
Okay, maybe its a little stiff, but you have to admit that putting this together on a web page is pretty cool!
Filed under: news, releases — gregturn @ 9:33 pm
Please read the official press release from SpringSource about this historic release of Spring Python. Please visit http://www.springsource.com/download/community in order to download a copy. NOTE: Spring Python has now been relocated to the top level, instead of being inside EXT.
This demonstrates that Spring Python has a nicely honed development process, committed to providing stable APIs, while also focusing on new and innovative changes. While we have worked hard since the start of this project back in 2006, we still lots of ideas and have plenty more work to do.
I wish to thank Mark Pollack, the current sponsor of Spring Python and code geek that developed Spring .NET, for coming on board quickly, and supporting me in every way possible to get this release wrapped up and pushed out for everyone to use. I also want to thank Russ Miles, former SpringSource consultant, who has supported me for over the past year with encouragement and feedback. I also thank the community for its valuable comments, questions, and suggestions that has helped steer this project in a positive direction.
Key changes used to this release include:
Filed under: java, python — gregturn @ 9:10 am
I was tracking some comments, and recently noticed a thread of discussion (in English) on a python mailing list. This is a follow-up to someone else posting about his discovery of Spring Python through the news announcement from SpringSource. (I appreciated that the person also caught on to my article defending the usage of AOP in python.)
They concluded their response by indicating:
Aunque para convencerme de usarlo todavía le falta compararse con otros frameworks de python.
(Run this through Google Translate if you need to.) Apparently, this person, while slightly impressed that I wasn’t coding in horrible java paradigms, didn’t see enough to use this instead of other python frameworks. I knew that he was comparing it to other python web frameworks.
I started thinking about the basis of all this, and realized a little bit of a history lesson is in order. Anybody who has ever heard of Spring, knows it by its full name, The Spring Framework. This should help illuminate why Spring is referred to as a framework, and why Spring Python is often thought of as a framework itself.
Starting around 1999, the first EJB spec came out. This was the technology everyone in the java industry started using, and people were throwing together any and all java web apps using EJBs. It caused a resurgance in the value of java, and arguably catapulted java into the enterprise space. EJBs promised much. The application servers that would run your EJB-based app had many features, like transactions, security, failover, messaging, and web services to name a few. All you had to do was extend a few interfaces, write a few configuration files, and do a little configuration to the app server.
Well, that was how it was supposed to be, right? The truth was, EJB apps required lots of XML file configuration. Each container had deviations, so your app tended to be container-specific. People usually had too many services turned on, and unit testing was next to impossible. You couldn’t test your app outside the container, so turn around time to see your changes was a nightmare. That is what generated the flurry of frameworks, like Struts, to help make EJB app development simpler. By extending these framework’s classes, you had a little bit less to extend, less to write, and less to configure. But you still had to do it anyway. And that turn around time to test your app? No better. And you had to make your WHOLE app do this. There was no such thing as, “Part of my app is using Struts, another part is using Wicket.”
Then in 2002, Rod Johnson, a java software consultant, wrote a book Expert One-on-One J2EE Development without EJB. When Rod’s book hit the shelves, the message he was sending was completely unorthodox. He showed tactics of code development that quickly made these container-based services obsolete. You didn’t have to extend anyone’s classes. And…you didn’t have to adopt any framework lock-stock-and-barrel. Instead, your app could be 99% based on POJOs. The code he was writing for examples in the book was very pragmatic, and was just like the other frameworks, only it was a framework based on POJOs. Another consultant approached Rod about releasing that software as an open source project, and thus was born The Spring Framework.
This code, while acting similar in output as other frameworks, had a peculiar difference: it did not require actually extending anybody’s classes. In fact, you could write your code 99% framework-free, and Rod & Co. encouraged this.
I argue: both!
Considering that a library is a set of functions and classes you download and install in your software development toolbox, Spring fits this perfectly. It was inspired by the need to overcome the lethargic development process of the EJB spec. Not only did they improve over EJB’s way of doing things, they also enhanced JDBC, JDNI, JMX, and other things.
So, yes, Spring is a library. But it is ALSO a framework, in that its original intention was to faciliate building enterprise-grade web applications inside EJB containers. They simply showed that the servlet container was enough. In fact, many shops started fresh adopted the concept of using Apache Tomcat or Jetty as the servlet container, which has been challening the commerical app server market. Combined with the fact that your app could run inside and outside an EJB container, and also be easily JUnit-tested without the slow make-deploy cycle made it a hit.
And…its NOT a framework!
Yeah, I know I did, but many people interpret framework as code meant to be extended. Spring doesn’t require this. It may accomplish the same end result as these other EJB frameworks, but through simpler means. I know this first hand, because I have developed thick Java client apps using Swing. No EJB container to be found! And yet, I have found Spring provided much leverage and functionality. I didn’t have to extend anything. Okay…I had a unique situation involving security where I needed to extend a Spring Security interface, but 99% of my code doesn’t do that. And that’s the point.
Okay, if you’re still reading, it means you are really a cross technology buff. Or maybe you just read blogs instead of sword fighting while waiting while waiting for your code to compile. Otherwise, you freaked that I spent so much time talking about Java, XML, EJBS, and fled the scene. Well, I’m a polyglot programmer. I use all kinds of stuff: C/C++, Java, Python, Tcl/Tk/Expect, PERL, bash/csh, jython, scala, groovy, clojure, anything! Actually, I had never heard the term until I saw Russ’s Skills Matter presentation where he presented himself as an “self professed, unapologetic, polyglot programmer”. But I immediately connected with it.
Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that the concepts Rod presented are of incredible value. Its not the fact that he was working in Java, but instead the idea that pragmatism is valuable. Instead of always resting comfortably against specs, we need to always be on the lookout for places and paradigms where we are wasting countless cycles in coding and re-coding the same thing. I contend that repetition is one of the top ranking source of bugs, if not the highest.
My first entry into the world of Spring was through their fabulous JdbcTemplate. Writing SQL queries without leaking cursors and connections was of high important to me. When I decided to code a carputer application, I picked Python because reading Dive Into Python had sold me on the beauty of it. However, I quickly realized I was missing my lean-and-mean JdbcTemplate. I started coding a DatabaseTemplate to help me, and realized I was starting to do something just like Rod. Well, I decided then and there to share my library with anyone who was interested. Hope it helps you like it has helped me.
I think, and it’s not a mockery, that the Java world is rather a framework type of environment which leads usually to have as many frameworks as you have developers for the very reason I described above. Python has also its share of frameworks but the language is flexible enough to encourage libraries. I *strongly* believe that Python Spring[sic] has both functionalities that could be attractive to many developers while having the chance of doing so as a library rather than a framework. –Sylvain while commenting about Spring Python w/CherryPy 3
And that’s why I call it Spring Python. It takes the cool concepts of Spring, and write them in a slick-and-quick, pythonic library. And yes, it is a library.
Filed under: wikipedia — gregturn @ 9:20 am
Spring Python has had a wikipedia article for some time. I know, I wrote it. Today, someone has proposed deleting the article, citing that the it doesn’t establish its notability. I encourage anyone interested to put in their $0.02. However, please do NOT go rabid. Whether you think this fits wikipedia’s criteria for an individual article or not, please put in your opinion backed up by links to resources, while following wikipedia’s guide for article deletion (as show on the site).
Please vote your conscience. What am I trying to say? If you think Spring Python is good, but doesn’t fit their criteria of an article, go ahead and vote it down. If you think this project has something unique and distinct, then vote it up. (Can anyone say unobtrusive AOP?) A key factor is that there is about 7 days before they will make a decision of which way to go, so if you’re going to vote, please vote soon.
Personally, I would like to keep the article. But it’s not the end of the world if its deleted, because this blog, the official website, and our source code repository are the heart and sole of this project. Whatever your opinion is, if you only express it here on this blog, it won’t influence the vote on whether or not to delete this article.
Thanks everyone,
Greg Turnquist, Spring Python project lead
The wikipedia article has been deleted.
00:05, 18 June 2009 Cirt (talk | contribs) deleted “Spring Python” (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Spring Python)
Filed under: news, releases — gregturn @ 1:44 pm
For those of you new to this project, Spring Python takes the concepts implemented by the Spring Framework (Java), and applies them to Python. This provides a powerful library of functionality to help you get back to writing the code that makes you money. You can visit Spring Python’s official web page, or skip right to the downloads.
Yes, we’re a tad late. Okay, we’re really late, but in case you fell off the planet, SpringSource lost a valuable member of its team, Russ Miles, who was also the sponsor for this project. There were other high priority things happening, so considering this is an extension, it took a little longer than usual to get to making a release. Which brings me to my next point. I want to welcome Mark Pollack as the new sponsor for this extension. He is the code geek that developed Spring .NET. I have had the benefit of meeting him at least year’s SpringOne Americas conference and attending his presentation, and we have also corresponded over email and IM.
You can scroll down to see the release notes. There actually isn’t much change in the code. We are trying to freeze things into a stable API. However, one thing not listed was a key problem we had to solve with coily. coily is the command-line tool that let’s you download Spring Python plugins. Coily was having trouble handling data hosted on the S3 servers used to stage these downloads, so I had to fix it. It now offers you the correct name.
When you query this version to see what plugins are available, you should see this:
$ ./coily --list-available-plugins
Coily v1.0.0 - the command-line management tool for Spring Python
===============================================================================
Copyright 2006-2008 SpringSource (http://springsource.com), All Rights Reserved
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0
Available plugins:
gen-cherrypy-app springpython-plugin-gen-cherrypy-app-1.0.0-RC1.tar.gz 2009-01-22 18:08
gen-cherrypy-app springpython-plugin-gen-cherrypy-app-1.0.0-RC2.tar.gz 2009-06-03 18:23You may be seeing two copies listed here, but when you try to install, it will grab RC2’s version.
Release Notes – SX Spring Python – Version 1.0.0-RC2
Well, I have been in contact with a company in Germany that is using Spring Python as a key piece of their software solution. They have even granted me access to view their code base. It is exciting seeing them in action, especially since they are writing some extensions to Spring Python and also experimenting with using it inside Jython.
What does this boil down to? Community feedback is a key ingredient to finding out what features need to be added, modified and improved. Through IM and email, we have already identified some mods to DatabaseTemplate supporting convention-over-configuration, and have already coded a SimpleRowMapper. If your POPO’s attributes match the column names of a query, you don’t need to create a custom RowMapper. Instead, plug-in this one, and it will link them together, without requiring you to extend any of Spring Python’s classes.
1 2 3 | self.databaseTemplate.query( "select name, category from animal", rowhandler=SimpleRowMapper(testSupportClasses.Animal)) |
SimpleRowMapper only needs a class name. It will instantiate one of these classes for each row, and then populates the name and category attributes with the results of the query.
There is also a DictionaryRowMapper, which returns a list of dictionaries, instead of tuples. The key point is that convention-over-configuration has become an accepted way to rapidly write essential code without getting caught up the details, and Spring Python embraces this concept.
There is just one wrinkle to make this work: the API used in RowMapper has a slight change (we added metadata as an optional attribute). Since 1.0 is a frozen API, and we are trying to get to a final release, Sven and I agreed to put this change into Spring Python v1.1, so for now, you can only get it from our source repository. Stay tuned for updates!