It should still work fine -- it will just block. We use a blocking mysql client -- the most important part of non-blocking is non-blocking on remote resources. Local blocking can be handled with more server instances (which is how most python servers handle it).
- Paul Buchheit
If your database is slow you can fix it (and if you can't you have bigger things to worry about). Like Paul says the real benefit is making asynchronous HTTP requests. You can't control how slow a 3rd party is so it's best to not block when fetching external data. Tornado makes that easy.
- Benjamin Golub
@delamothe i gave up already and went with django. i forgot that i am technologically conservative.