[DB-SIG] Oracle DB driver

[Németh Miklós]

Dear DB-SIG Pythonians,

I am quite new on this list, and also quite new in Python. However, I am
an old chap in OO  (Java, C++) and database (and even in ODBMS)
application programming.
I think my beloved language will be Python for the next years.
I am also employed by several corporate projects as chief technology
officer. So, I started evaluating Python and the Python platform (tools
necessary for creating mission critical business applications).
Python as a language seems to be perfect: easy to learn, pycode
compilation, multithreading, OO, easy extensibility, etc.
But what about database access support, especially to Oracle?
I found that there is a Python Database API Specification 2.0 which
seems to be OK. I would have some remarks and suggestions, but more on
this later.
However, both Oracle drivers I found do not support this specification.
I had a look at Thomas J. Cullington's oramodule, but I think it is
quite old and unmaintained.
The other is Christopher Petrilli's DCOracle which supports Python
DB-API 1.0, its implementation was very complex (he used SWIG). And even
DCOracle does not support calling PL/SQL procedures having array (PL/SQL
table) arguments, which is very important for some large scale Oracle
applications.
So I decided to write a third Oracle driver compatible with Python
DB-API 2.0 and supporting all reasonable services available via OCI. I
am an experienced OCI programmer, but quite new in writing Python
extensions. I'd like to have your support and help in cases where I have
problems.
Any comments are welcome.

Miklos Nemeth
IQSOFT