Q:

Python framework for an extremely lightweight python webservice

I want to develop an extremely lightweight web service with a RESTful JSON API.  I will do all the session management on the server side.  The solution will receive several 100k (or more) API calls an hour and return (compressed) JSON as response, it should be able to scale effortlessly. 
Security is naturally important, but I want to avoid heavy weight frameworks like Django etc, and preferably will use a webserver like nginx or lighttpd instead of Apache. 
At the server end, this is all I need:

user session management
security (protection against atleast the more common attacks such as cross site request forgery etc)
url routing
http utilities (e.g. compression)

I am aware of web2py, but its deployment options seems 'not well though out' at best - so far, I have been unable to get it to work with Apache, despite following the user manuals. 
Can anyone suggest a python framework (and web server) best suited for this task? 

A:

if you want to go really lightweight, you might try wsgi itself without a framework, or maybe Flask.  I understand wsgi runs on lighttpd, you'll get some hits on a Google search.