[DB-SIG] Databases chapter for Python on Windows book

[Andy Robinson]

As some of you know, Mark Hammona dna I are putting the finishing
touches to "Python Programming for Win32", due from O'Reilly this
autumn.  I'm doing the database chapter.  I hope you'll forgive me for
asking for answers I could probably dig out with a lot of research,
but I have a load of other subjects to research too.

The book needs to 'punch the right buttons' for corporate developers
and IT managers and I am pushing the ideas of data cleaning and
transformation scripts in Python.

Q1.  I know the ODBC API and the Python DB API provide support for
precompiled SQL statements.  What I don't know is which databases and
drivers actually use these to get better performance.  Can anyone help
out on this?

Q2.  MySQL has quite a following.  Monty granted me a license on
Windows for the sake of the book and I'd like to say something about
it.  Unfortunately I have not yet found a compelling reason to use it
for examples.  Is there anything neat that MySQL, or the Python
interface to it,  does that cannot be do with (say) SQL Anywhere,
which is just as cheap on Windows?

Q3.  We like to include 'case studies' of half a page to a page to ram
home the point that Python is in use in the real world.  Does anyone
have any neat stories to tell or projects to boast about?  

Many thanks,

Andy Robinson