I've been hearing a bit about Maypole (think "Struts for Perl"). In a nutshell, it's designed to allow you to write complex database driven Web applications very quickly. For example, how long would it take you to build a Friendster/Orkut type web application that does the following?

• login
• logout
• view users
• browse users
• search for users
• edit profiles
• mail out invites to new users
• accept invites
• reject invites
• sign up new users
• offer friend connections
• accept friend connections

Simon Cozens writes that it took him just over a week with only 300 lines of Perl. Maypole runs under mod_perl and is available on the CPAN. It's built on top of Class::DBI, Template Toolkit, DBI and Apache::MVC.

This is something that I think Perl has long been needing. Whether or not Maypole is the way to go is not something that I can say, but I do feel that something like this would be a Good Thing for several reasons. First, my job boils down to providing maximum value for minumum cost and the less code I have to write, the fewer bugs I will create. Second, Perl has long been lacking an enterprise level Web application framework. Regardless of your views on frameworks, this has been an issue which has led many outside of the Perl community to dismiss Perl.

Maypole is being actively developed, it has a mailing list and, with Simon Cozens being behind it, I think it has a chance to go far so long as people get behind it. It's also being built on top of solid, proven technologies.

Any thoughts? Are there problems with his approach? Are there competitors worth checking out?