Native ODBC access for python on linux?

[callmebill at gmail.com]

I'm getting my feet wet with making Python talk to MySQL via ODBC.  I
started on Windows, and it went smoothly enough due to the ODBC stuff
that apparently is native to Python at least on windows (I've been
following ch. 13 of Mark Hammond's py on win32 book).

But now I'm trying to do equivalent stuff on linux (Fedora Core 3) with
python 2.3.5 and mysql.  I'd like to stick with packages that are
native to python, rather than relying on external stuff (e.g., MySQLdb
and mxODBC).  Is this possible, or do I have to use 3rd party pieces to
use ODBC with Python under linux?


As an aside, I've only used ODBC to access db's, period.  I've never
used, for example, MySQL's API for working with a MySQL db.  I'm
curious to see what that looks like, if anyone has any examples
(python, c, or otherwise).

Thanks in advance for any help.
-Bill