Generic database dictionary access

[Edward Diener]

Michael Fuhr wrote:
> "Edward Diener" <eldiener at earthlink.net> writes:
>
>> Has there been any movement in the 5 year time span since the 2.0 API
>> was published to add richer generic functionality for relational
>> databases as regards data dictionary access ? I fully realize that
>> each major RDBMS has its own methods for programatically querying
>> its data dictionary, and I suspect that there is no common SQL
>> specification for doing so, but I would think that richer
>> functionality along these lines might be welcome to Python database
>> programmers other than myself.
>
> SQL defines INFORMATION_SCHEMA as a standard way to query metadata,
> although not all databases implement it.  Google for more info.

Yes, I see it but it seems as if even some of the large databases don't
support it ( unless I am mistaken, Oracle for instance ). Nonetheless it
would be great if the Python database API were able to use it to create
richer data dictionary information than what it provides. In particular
constraints and unque key/foreign key links in tables if this could be
discovered generically through the INFORMATION_SCHEMA standard methods.