Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

The Python Database API (DBAPI) 2.0

As I mentioned earlier, the Python standard library does not come with an RDBMS interface, but there are many free third-party modules that let your Python programs access specific databases. Such modules mostly follow the Python Database API 2.0 standard, also known as the DBAPI. A new version of the DBAPI (possibly to be known as 3.0) is likely to appear in the future, but currently there are no firm plans or schedules for one. Programs written against DBAPI 2.0 should work with minimal or no changes with any future DBAPI 3.0, although 3.0, if and when it comes, will no doubt offer further enhancements that future programs will be able to take advantage of.

If your Python program runs only on Windows, you might prefer to access databases by using Microsoft’s ADO package through COM. For more information on using Python on Windows, see Python Programming on Win32, by Mark Hammond and Andy Robinson (O’Reilly). Since ADO and COM are platform-specific, and this book focuses on cross-platform use of Python, I do not cover ADO and COM further in this book. However, at http://adodbapi.sourceforge.net/ you will find a useful Python extension that lets you access ADO indirectly through DBAPI.

After importing a DBAPI-compliant module, call the module’s connect function with suitable parameters. connect returns an instance of Connection, which represents a connection to the database. The instance supplies commit and rollback methods to deal with transactions, ...