[Chicago] Yet another ORM for Python

[Pete]

On Tuesday July 10 2007 1:41 pm, Brantley Harris wrote:
> That's the bit that's harsh: "we don't have a good method to apply
> changes to the database when you change your code".  If this could be
> solved, it would be another step towards decoupling the DBMS from the
> general development experience, something I would love, personally.
>
> It's something I've been pushing for since I first saw Django.  A
> while ago I started drafting plans to add this "schema evolution"
> functionality but then someone took it as a Google Summer of Code
> project, last year, and I haven't heard about it since.

Generating schema change scripts is a very hard problem.  It's analagous to 
diffing a pickle.  There's been quite a bit of academic research done in this 
area, but not much has come of it.  IIRC, there's a windows-based schema 
migration tool for Oracle that's supposed to be decent, but it's quite 
expensive and by no means automatic.

> It seems to me that a good step forward for the Django ORM would be to
> rebase itself on SQLAlchemy (which I thought was in development?)
> while untangling itself from the rest of the code so that the ORM
> could be used better, stand-alone.

AFAIK, you're not forced to use Django's ORM and can use SQLAlchemy instead if 
you like, but you lose some of the automagic.  Also AFAIK, the Django folks 
have said they're not planning to ditch their ORM.

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