Python is increasingly used by DBAs as a general-purpose scripting language, despite the pressure to adopt Microsoft's PowerShell. They find it easy to learn, powerful, and reasonably intuitive. This article explains the attraction of Python and gives a general introduction to the language, suitable for anyone who has been wondering whether to give it a try.

Beef up your testing toolset by learning how to perform HTTP request-response tests of your ASP.NET Web apps using IronPython, a .NET Framework-compliant implementation of Python.

RPyC is a seamless library for integrating Python processes on many machines/processes. This article looks at the advantages or drawbacks RPyC has over other distributed Python frameworks such as XML-RPC and Pyro. A few simple examples of using RPyC are included to give you a feel for the library.

Django, a Python web framework, consists of an object-relational mapper (ORM), back-end controller, and template system. MongoDB is a document-oriented database (also known as a NoSQL database) effective for scaling and high performance. In this article, learn how to call MongoDB from Python (using MongoEngine), and integrate it into a Django project in lieu of the built-in ORM. A sample web interface for creating, reading, writing, and updating data to the MongoDB back end is included.

IBM® DB2® pureXML® allows you to store XML data natively in a relational database management system, giving you the power and flexibility to report on this data without disturbing the advantages that its XML format offers. In this tutorial, you will learn how to connect to a DB2 database from the Python programming language, importing data about population from the United States Census Bureau. You will use Python to convert this CSV file into XML, before inserting this XML data natively into DB2. Finally, you will use Python to create a command-line application that produces some informative tables that you can access through a menu system.

Where possible, creating Web applications — including Ajax-based applications — in a RESTful way avoids a large class of bugs. However, a pitfall of REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is sending duplicate data across similar XMLHttpRequests. This tip shows how the moderate use of session cookies can maintain just enough server-side state to significantly reduce client-server traffic, while still allowing fallback to cookie-free operation.

Natural Language Processing is used everywhere—in search engines, spell checkers, mobile phones, computer games, and even in your washing machine. Python's Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK) suite of libraries has rapidly emerged as one of the most efficient tools for Natural Language Processing.

The built-in administration console provided by Django is one of its biggest selling points. What if you need to customize more than just the look and feel and a couple of model fields? Find out how to extend the existing admin application without ever modifying the source.

The open source SOA company's (WSO2) Web services framework for Jython (WSF/Jython) provides a simple approach to creating and consuming Web services in Jython. This framework integrates the Apache Axis2 Web services engine with Jython, extending all the power and versatility of the Axis2 engine to Jython users. Now, with just a few lines of code, Jython users can enjoy the benefits of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) using Web services. Web service clients written using the WSF/Jython framework can invoke enterprise Web services that require WS-Security. WSF/Jython also supports sending binary attachments as MTOM.

Django is a Python-based open source Web application framework that focuses on making the process of creating database-driven Web sites and Web applications easier. Getting started with developing Django applications is simple, as a development Web server is included with the framework. However, this server is not suitable for use in a production environment, so further steps are required to deploy your Django application to the Web. In this article, you will learn about the Django framework and how to install it on your local machine. Discover how a Django application is made and about the automatic administration interface created for your application. You will then find out how to deploy your Django application to the Web on a server running Apache and mod_python. Finally, learn how Django applications can and should be scaled as your application's requirements grow.