I am working on a realtime data website that has a data-mining backend side to it. I am highly experienced in both Python and C++/C#, and wondering which one would be preferable for the backend development.
I am strongly leaning towards Python for its available libraries and ease of use. But am I wrong? If so, why?
As I side question, would you recommend using SQLAlchemy? Are there any drawback to it (performance is crucial) compared to _mysql or MySQLdb?   
Thanks!
We do backend development based on Zope, Python and other Python-related stuff since almost 15 years. Python gives you great flexibility and all-batteries included (likely true for C#, not sure about C++).
If you do RDBMS development with Python: SQLAlchemy is the way to go. It provides a huge functionality and saved my a** over the last years a couple of times...Sqlalchemy can be complex and complicated but the advantages is that you can hide a complex database schema behind an OO facade..very handy like any ORM in general. 
_mysql vs MySQLdb...I only know of the python-mysql package.
Designing a Website Backend - Python or C++/C#?