Thanks again for the feedback.
What is intersting is that we are using roundup with many more issues
and users, which makes me believe there may be something different
to your setup.

As towards database connector and template engine:
* Roundup predates a number of "modern" pythonic database layers
and it was already discussed if we wanted to give up this flexibility
which we have now, as it seems to be basically working (of course not
counting your crawling experience). 
* Since roundup 1.4.20 there is _experimental_ support for Chameleon.