We just release PyAMF 0.4-RC2 yesterday! While it is not quite the final version, this is a huge step for the project and includes a ton of updates and features.

Some highlighted features include:

• cPyAMF – An implementation of PyAMF serialization that results in tremendous speedups.
• SQLAlchemy Adapter – Adapter for the popular Python Database ORM.
• Improved Google AppEngine Adapter – makes deploying Flex/Flash apps on Google’s new service even easier.

You can see our official announcement on the PyAMF Blog.

Currently PyAMF 0.4 is in the Release Candidate stage so we are testing and getting feedback. The release candidate and final version (when it is ready) are available for download here.

Last night, Google launched App Engine which allows developers to create web applications and publish them on Google’s infrastructure. The exciting part of the App Engine in my eyes is that the language you use to develop on it is Python. Google provides many API’s to interface the Python programming language with the various services they offer. You can authenticate via Google accounts, use Bigtable to store data, and use Google Aps to bind your application to your own domain. They opened the initial “Preview Release” to the first 10,000 developers to sign up. From the looks of it, those 10,000 spots filled up within the first few hours of the launch.

I was fortunate to be one of the first to sign up and got my account last night. I created a basic hello world application to test and overall the system seems very easy to use. My demo is at http://labs.appspot.com.

I also created an account for the PyAMF project and we were able to get a PyAMF echo server running on App Engine. It is currently located at: http://ae.pyamf.org We are continuing to work with it today and tomorrow to write up some examples and a How-to to get people started quickly. We will continue to add more examples to the site as time progresses and we get everything documented.

The most noticeable addition to Hydra recently has been the addition of the Flex UI. Flex is an open source Flash framework from Adobe that allows for rapid development of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Behind the Flex UI is the powerful Twisted framework that powers the data back end. Communication between Flex and Twisted is handled by the PyAMF library. PyAMF is an implementation of Adobe’s Action Message Format (AMF) for Python. This library allows for data to be exchanged in a binary form which is many times faster than the traditional XML mechanism.

Enough talk, lets get to the show! Here is a shot of the CPE LiveGrid module from Hydra. LiveGrid handles adding, searching, modifying, and deleting of CPE’s and assets withing the system. This module was originally based on an XML API, however, after changing to PyAMF speeds over doubled when running:

The second example here is of the CPE LiveDiag module. This allows for real time graphing and analysis of a CPE’s performance in the network and will allow network administrators to make faster diagnostics when problems occur. This module was also a port from its original XML interface to the PyAMF library:

These are just a few of the new interfaces coming in the release of Hydra EMS.

Back in January I discovered the PyAMF project. This project’s goal is to create an implementation of AMF (Action Message Format) for the Python Programming language. Last week they released version 0.1.0, their first stable release.

So far, I have been extremely impressed with this project. The library offers integration with popular Python web frameworks including Twisted, Django, and Pylons. The performance is excellent and will only improve as the team intends to annex their Python code, with C for faster serialization of requests. In addition to an excellent library, the developers have also provided a number of examples which attempt to cover every major area of the library. I have already begun using it in various projects including Hydra, which will be released this month.

Look for more info and updates on the PyAMF project in the coming weeks.