Does Linux have a unified way of accessing databases? Windows has ADO...

[Alex Martelli]

John J. Lee wrote:
        ...
>> > but does Linux have any sort of mechanism for unified database access
>> > independant of which database is being accessed?
>>
>> No.
> 
> I hope Alex hasn't had all his verbosity knocked out of him by the book-
> writing process.  :(

Others of my recent posts should assuage THAT fear -- still, a simple,
direct yes-no question still admits of yes-no answers.

> There's nothing to stop you using (for example) the python database api on
> unix.

Of course not -- that's cross-platform in the operating-system sense,
but language-dependent.  ODBC, which another poster proposed in the
"unified database access" role, is language-independent.

But both are strictly connected to the _relational_ model, which ADO (which
the original poster singled out as an example of what he meant) *isn't* --
ADO (the whole "Unified Database Access" architecture, actually) supports
alternative organizations, such as hierarchical and "cubes" (a la OLAP).

Python's DB-API and ODBC don't.  So, the answer remains "no".


Alex