relational database?

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> 
> "Ruediger Maehl" <ruediger.maehl_nospam at web.de> wrote in message news:<newscache$d8oxtg$iv4$1 at www-neu.dzsh.de>...
> >
> > "Trung Hoang" <thoa0025 at mail.usyd.edu.au> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> > news:pRzp8.4373$hi7.15765 at news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> > > What relational database is easy to setup and use with python? besides
> > > msql (im having some problems)
> >
> > SAPDB, a full featured database for free at www.sapdb.org
> > with Python interface.
> 
> I'm not sure I would second that recommendation unless SAP DB has
> changed dramatically over the past few weeks. I found that the
> installation was quite a bit more complicated than, for example, MySQL
> (at least on Windows) and upon issuing the arcane commands for
> restarting database instances, the software would complain that the
> instances needed restarting, which was hardly very reassuring with
> respect to either the stability or the usability of the software.

Oh, SAP DB is quite usable. In fact, we switched from MySQL
to SAP DB for most of our work. SAP DB is fast, full-featured,
open-source and very stable. It does have it's share of bugs, but
then so do MySQL and all the others.

> As for the Python DB-API module, I couldn't get any version of it I
> found to work with the database system. Admittedly, my objective was
> to get a JDBC connection up and running, which was eventually
> successful, and I therefore cut that particular side-investigation
> short.

You should probably try zxODBC which is a JDBC-based version
of mxODBC written by Brian Zimmer. It's part of Jython since
version 2.1.
 
> Despite it's often-cited shortcomings, MySQL and the MySQLdb module
> are quite easy to set up. On UNIX systems, PostgreSQL and pgPySQL are
> possibly as easy, although one doesn't need to suffer a manual with
> PostgreSQL which consists of a single >1.5MB HTML file. I've also had
> success with Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere and mxODBC (without a
> driver manager), but that software is commercially licensed and may
> not even be available any more.
> 
> Another interesting issue that one might want to consider later on is
> Unicode support with database systems and Python DB-API modules. Some
> modules don't seem to support Unicode (pyPgSQL, for example), whereas
> others apparently rely on the database system for such support to
> actually function (eg. mxODBC). Some people may find this an
> irritation earlier than others, however.

mxODBC is certainly well alive. Note that Unicode support in mxODBC
is available both as emulation (mxODBC does the conversion to e.g.
UTF-8) and using native support (the ODBC driver has to support
Unicode).

MS SQL Server and MS Access both support native Unicode mode
via mxODBC.

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
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