Is it just me, or is Sqlite3 goofy?

[mensanator at aol.com]

skip at pobox.com wrote:
> >> I think your whole experience is based on it.
>
>     >> But shouldn't a significant feature like that be explained in the
>     >> Python manuals? Why should I go dig up Sqlite FAQs to learn what
>     >> should have been in the manuals?
>
> I don't know, but I will take a stab at a plausible explanation.  First,
> sqlite support has only been in Python for a month or three.  Its first
> official unveiling will be when 2.5 is released.

Although possibly too late for the final release, now would be a
good time to straighten out the documentation.

> Second, it's common when
> wrapping functionality into Python to rely on the documentation for the
> thing being wrapped.  The thinner the wrapper, the more you tend to rely on
> the underlying documentation.  Also, the more functionally rich the thing
> you've wrapped, the more you rely on the underlying documentation.  I
> wouldn't be at all surprised if the pysqlite author operated under that
> assumption.

Ok, that's certainly plausible. But it's not an excuse. The thinner the
documentation, the greater the emphasis should be made to point
the reader to a more adequate source. Simply listing the Sqlite home
page at the bottom of the page is hardly good enough. It should be
explicitly stated in bold letters that the reader should go read the
Sqlite FAQ because it radically differs from *real* databases and
provide a seperate link to it in the body of the documentation.

> That the Python developers didn't pick up on the issue is not
> surprising.  I'm not sure how many of them are (py)sqlite users, probably
> relatively few.

I would be surprised if they had never used ANY database. A little
thing like dynamic field typing will simply make it impossible to
migrate your Sqlite data to a *real* database.

What I'll do is re-format my rant, suggest how *I* would do the
documentation, fix the errors I found in the examples and send it
off to the Python bug tracking as suggested in the manuals.

How's that as a plan?

> 
> Skip