Database Question

[David Rushby]

> What are some relational databases python supports that do not require a
> server to run on and can be used under Windows?

I'm not sure what you mean by "do not require a server to run on".  Do you
mean the database must run in the same process as the Python application
(Gadfly's default behavior) or that the database server process must be slim
enough to run on a typical client machine?

Off the top of my head:

-  Interbase 6.x  http://www.borland.com/devsupport/interbase/opensource/
-  Firebird (an Interbase offshoot)  http://firebird.sourceforge.net
-  MySQL  http://mysql.com/
-  Gadfly  http://www.chordate.com/gadfly.html
-  PostgreSQL is cool, but Windows support is poor at present.
http://postgresql.org/

Semi-compliant Python DB-API modules are available for all of the above:
http://www.vex.net/parnassus/apyllo.py/973100124

My personal favorite among the RDMSes listed above is Interbase/Firebird;
it's far more featureful than MySQL, yet lightweight.  I know of two
available modules for Interbase/Firebird:  kinterbasdb
 http://kinterbasdb.sourceforge.net/ ) and gvib
 http://www.zope.org/Members/bkc/gvibDA ).  gvib is apparently not as thread
safe as its documentation claims, so I'm currently using kinterbasdb, which
seems to have a less efficient design and is hard to compile for Python 2.1
from the files available at SourceForge (I can send you a compiled DLL if
you'd like).