Postgres support

[Steve Williams]

Paul Boddie wrote:

> Steve Williams <stevewilliams at wwc.com> wrote in message news:<3B47C125.A65E5EAC at wwc.com>...
> [snip]

> > Nevertheless, I've managed to survive and prosper on a meager toolkit of
> > (Select, Insert, Delete, Update, Create, Drop, etc) on SQL-Server, Sybase,
> > Informix, DB2, and Oracle.  If I'm not fastidious, I can even get by with it
> > in ACCESS.
>
> How do you manage to do different types of joins?  Do any of the systems you mention use the
> explicit join syntax, for example?

My work lately has been in DB2 and I use explicit joins exclusively--they provide the level of
documentation and control I want and need.  It's been a long time since I've used anything
else.  I also use Interbase for a BiTemporal database I'm developing and, again, I use explicit
joins.  When I worked in SQL-Server, I used a sad mixture of implicit and explicit joins--I
hadn't seen the light yet.  I can't remember specifically about my work with the others.

> What about the statement parameter (bind variable) syntax?

>
> As far as binding, Python does a nice job for me:
>
>     cursorODS = connectionODS.cursor()
>     intInvoiceNumber = int(str(parmInvoiceNumber))
>     parmList = (intInvoiceNumber,)
>     cursorODS.execute("select " \
>       + "InvoiceNumber,LineNumber,PartNumber,Description,Quantity,UnitOfMeasure,"
>       + "Price,ExtendedSale,Cost,ExtendedCost,GP,GPPercent " \
>       + "from ODS.OrderLineDetail " \
>       + "where InvoiceNumber = ?",parmList)
>     resultSet = cursorODS.fetchall()
>     cursorODS.close()
>     return resultSet
>
> This works for DB2 and Interbase via ODBC and mxODBC.

> > > But most likely the usual crybabies will still be crying about "RAW" (sic)
> > > C-level interfacing (to a zillion incompatible proprietary idiotic API's, no
> > > doubt -- the fact that there IS a solid, well-developed standard doesn't
> > > count:-).  So, naah, not worth the bother.
> >
> > I take no notice of that remark.  Do you have an opinion on Corba?
>
> Which standard are we talking about now? ADO and COM aren't exactly
> there on most flavours of UNIX, if at all. Of course, there's always
> ODBC. ;-)
>
> Paul

I know very little about ADO or COM.  Although mxODBC is a marvellous package, I'm always
suspicious of the actual ODBC drivers.  I would rather directly interface with my target
database.  But I don't have compile capability on some of my platforms (AIX or anything not
WinTel, actually), so my contribution to this thread was a fantasy about pre-compiled drivers
for all the databases on all the platforms.

In general, I don't see much emphasis on relational databases in the Python jungle.