[Q] Databases -- Gadfly vs Metakit vs SQLite

[A. Lloyd Flanagan]

"David LeBlanc" <whisper at oz.net> wrote in message news:<mailman.1047802347.7044.python-list at python.org>...

> Aside from it's dubious parentage, Jet has a reputation for being
> excruciatingly slow. I believe, but am not positive, that Outlook uses Jet

Outlook doesn't use Jet AFAIK.  Based on my experience, here's an
overview of Jet:
Pros:
  1.  Doesn't come with Windows, but does with Office, and it's easy
to obtain and install.
  2.  Fairly good SQL and referential integrity features.
  3.  Performance generally isn't bad, especially for databases of the
size you're describing.
  4.  You can set up the database and do a lot of data manipulation in
Access, for setting up test cases, evolving the database design, etc. 
But see Con #4 below.

Cons:
  1. Closed-source, Microsoft, yada yada yada...
  2. Reliability:  probably OK for a single-user app.  Do NOT share a
database file over a network with more than one user doing updates, I
don't care what the documentation says.  Unless you're perfectly OK
with rebuilding the database once a week or so and don't care if you
lose data.
  3. A lot of access to Jet databases (including the python driver) is
through ODBC.  As an early attempt at a general database driver, ODBC
isn't particularly well designed and often has problems if you stray
from basic database operations.  Performance ain't great, either.
  4. As you noted, anybody with Access can get into your database and
muck with it (although you can password-protect it).  Of course,
anybody who does that deserves what they get.

Bottom line:  I wouldn't recommend Jet for most uses.  If you're
willing to limit your app to single-user access, on a Windows
platform, it will probably work for you.  On the other hand, I've been
known to develop with Jet because it's convenient and later switch the
app to something more industrial-strength.