Python and MySQL

[Gerhard Häring]

Thomas Bartkus wrote:
> [some posters having the idea that MySQLdb works without a C extension]
> Okay - I neglected to look at the [site-packages] directory itself.  Here I
> do find [_mysql.pyd] full of binary code.  A MySQLdb related file that
> doesn't seem to have a corresponding file with Python source code. Mea
> culpa! This is on  MS Windows [C:\Python23].
> 
> But heck!  Now I'm looking at the /usr/lib/python2.3/site-packages on a
> Mandrake Linux box.  No [_mysql.] pyd here! Fewer files overall and while
> there are other file extensions, everything seems to have a corresponding
> [.py].

MySQLdb is based on a C extension module called _mysql on all platforms. 
The C extension modules have the extension ".pyd" on Windows by default, 
and ".so" on Unix.

It would in theory be possible to do without a C extension, but then you 
would have to implement the MySQL client-server protocol 
(http://dev.mysql.com/doc/internals/en/client-server-protocol.html) in 
Python, for example using the socket module.

Implementing a pure-Python package to interface a database by 
implementing the client-server protocol in Python has been done already 
for PostgreSQL, but I don't think it has been done for MySQL, yet.

-- Gerhard