[DB-SIG] Experiences with DB-API2.0

[Dustin Sallings]

Around 21:31 on Jun 21, 2002, M.-A. Lemburg said:

# * blobs and other more esoteric data types like images and Unicode
# * transaction isolation

	I think these two could be handled by the API, at least.  Yeah,
some of that stuff is hard, though, especially when dealing with
non-standard SQL databases (which I would suggest avoiding in the first
place, but that's a different matter).

# I think someone already write a helper which does this (converts various
# formats into one); we certainly can't force database module authors to
# use it, though.

	You could encourage them to not reproduce existing work, though.
As a driver developer, I would want to leverage as much existing work as
possible to get my job done, but as an application developer, I would want
to start writing DB code without first having to ask the driver how it
wants it.

# > Majority of what? Majority of actual users, or majority of
# > people who could have been users?
#
# Majority of users who have used Python's DB API modules in the past. We
# would have had many more outcries if people had felt that the DB API is
# not up to the task.

	Speaking for myself, I joined this list because I thought it was
lacking, but have been lurking because I haven't had the time to help
improve it yet.  When I noticed other people bringing up some of the same
problems I had noticed, I spoke up.  I wouldn't assume that just because
people are using it that it doesn't need help.

# Certainly not. Improvements are always possible. You do have to know
# what you want though and I have a feeling that Java people are missing
# their JDBC in Python. If that's the case, then we have a need for a JDBC
# style interface in Python -- perhaps on top of the existing DB API
# interface (which is much more low-level).

	This is a good point.  I had thought about coming up with an API
spec that covered some of the things I felt were missing and implementing
it on top of another driver to demonstrate.  It seems to me that higher
level APIs should be preferred for application developers over lower level
APIs, but that does not necessarily mean that lower level APIs shouldn't
exist.

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