JDBC <--> Python

[Tom Bryan]

Elam wrote:

> I've been programming with Python for about a year now and would like
> to use it for some CGI programming.  The programming involves
> accessing a proprietary db whose only access methods is thru JDBC.

Uh oh.  What DB?  Have you checked for a Python DB module?  Are you sure 
that there's no way to access the DB from C code?

> I've used Jython, but it's somewhat slow and from what I read, not
> really suitable for CGI work.

I suppose you could write Java servlets in Jython.  The servlet engine would 
be heavy, but then you wouldn't incur the speed hit of loading Jython for 
each page hit.

> Is there any generic framework ala DBI for python?  Any suggestions
> for alternatives?

Yes, but even Perl's DBI won't help you here.  The Python DB API spec (look 
for the DB-SIG on www.python.org) and Perl's DBI just define an interface 
that database module writers are supposed to expose.  Then, someone writes 
a database module, such as psycopg for PostgreSQL or DCOracle for Oracle.  
Under the covers, almost all of these modules are implemented at least 
partially in C, using the DB vendor's C libraries for accessing the DB.  

In a similar way, a database "supports" JDBC when they ship a bunch of 
.class files that implement the JDBC classes for their DB.  Now, if your DB 
only has a JDBC driver/library and no C-level access, it may be impossible 
to write a DB module for that DB for Python.  From Jython, of course, you 
can simply use the JDBC driver.  

Like I said, if you *really* want to avoid Java, you might try compiling 
your Jython code to Java .class files and running that code under something 
like Tomcat.  Of course, then you'll need to learn a bit about how servlets 
work.  

---Tom