[DB-SIG] How to know what to do with parameters...

[Chris Cogdon]

On Friday, May 16, 2003, at 10:29 US/Pacific, Kevin Jacobs wrote:
> The _dbapi_type is fine, although it is of little use by itself.  The
> _dbapi_value is the part that I have deep misgivings about.  Are we 
> going to
> define canonical string representations for every possible database 
> type for
> all possible backends as part of DB-API?

I think this highlights one of the classical interface problems.

- If we put the intelligence into the API, then it won't necessarily 
support new data types created by the application writer.
- If we put the intelligence into the data types, then it won't 
necessarily support differing backends[1]

This isn't meant to be arguing one way or the other. It's supposed to 
be +1 insightful, but -1 helpful :)


[1]Yes, yes, I know that 'portability' between different DBMSes and 
APIs is non-existant except for trivial SQL applications.


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