We recently had to do a very fast turn-around proof-of-concept for a Web-based Dashboard/Portal/UI on a reasonably straightforward relational schema in SQL Server.

As this was to be a throw-away development, we decided to leverage it for some internal training and feasibility study. We try to avoid buzzword bingo and don’t jump on every new technology/toolkit just because the usual suspects over at Slashdot are raving about it. Hence we’ll probably get around to looking at Ruby-on-Rails in 2007 if it is still in active development.

However, one very recent toolkit has caught our eye and that is TurboGears. The site describes it as “the rapid web development megaframework you’ve been looking for”. It integrates together a set of existing tools into a very slick framework which enables one to very quickly generate web applications which front databases.

The developer in question had it installed in minutes and raced throught the example “20 minute Wiki”. We had our proof-of-concept ready in a week. At this point we have only scratched the surface of Turbogears but we have kicked off further investigation so that we can be in a position to potentially use it on our next Web-App development. It is another example of how Python is really helping us deliver for our customer base.

[tags] Turbogears, Web Applications, Database, Mochikit, Kid, CherryPy, SQLObject[/tags]