[Info-vax] Python for x86?

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/13/2023 8:18 AM, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
> Den 2023-04-13 kl. 12:44, skrev Neil Rieck:
>> And although python is used to do a lot of admin scripting on Linux 
>> platforms (tools like "yum" and "firewall-cmd" are written in python), 
>> python does a really good job supporting server-side scripting under 
>> apache cgi-bin. I don't know how this is possible, but python programs 
>> are faster than compiled DEC-BASIC programs started via apache.
> 
> The performance depends a lot on if you are using standard Apache CGI
> or Apache "loadable modules". If you are just writing your own server
> apps, I guess they run as standard CGI (one process started per call).
> And I would expect Python to be available as a "loadable module". And
> that makes a big differnce, in particular on VMS with it's process
> creation overhead.
> 
> Here are some figures for WASD and Apache.
> http://wasd.vsm.com.au/wasd_root/wasdoc/features/#11.2.scripting

It is well known that CGI is not suited for high performance. And has
been known so for 25+ years.

Note though that the numbers in that link are awfully low per modern
standards. Today tens of thousands of requests per second is expected.

(it is even possible to find benchmarks showing hundreds of thousands
and even millions of requests per second, but those are very special
cases)

> We are using Python 2 in the form of PyRTE (persisting processes) and
> have OK performance. First call (starting the Python process) does have
> a 1-2 sec overhead, but following calls are processes in fractions of a
> second (incl. Rdb processing).
> 
> We are currently looking at writing our own persistent server processes
> to see if we can tweek the performance a bit more by using compiled
> code (Cobol, in our case).
> 
> Using a test C application (just returns a timestamp to the browser, the
> reply time including starting the VMS process is 172 ms. Additional 
> calls to the server with the process started are around 60 ms. As 
> reported by
> the performance tools in Firefox.

Why not try something like Python Flask?

Arne