Fourthought have extensively refactored their open source 4Suite Python XML server, resulting in an alpha release of version 0.11.

Announcing the release, Mike Olson writes:

We have taken all the lessons learned from developing, deploying and using 4SS so far, huddled up for an intensive few weeks, and emerged with a complete re-factoring of the architecture.

The most important change is that now the heart of 4SS, which is simply a set of Python APIs for managing and processing XML in a server-oriented framework, is directly exposed, rather than hidden through CORBA.

This change means that CORBA is reduced to the level of "just another" way of accessing 4Suite Server: along with HTTP, SOAP, WebDAV, etc. This reduction in prerequisites make 4Suite lighter and easier to install.

Olson also reports substantial improvement in documentation as well as a simplified install process. 4Suite is available from 4Suite.org.