Installation guide

mxODBC - Python ODBC Database Interface

•

db.setinputsizes() and db.setoutputsizes() are dummy

functions; this is allowed by DB API 2.0.

• The type objects / constructors (formerly found in the

dbi module

defined by DB API 1.0) are only needed if you want to write database

independent code.

• The connection constructor is available under three different names:

ODBC() (DB API 1.0), connect() (DB API 2.0) and Connect() (mxODBC

specific). See the next section for details on the used parameters.

mxODBC also defines a

DriverConnect() constructor which is available

for ODBC managers and some ODBC drivers. If you can, please use the

DriverConnect() API since this provides more flexibility in configuring

the connection.

5.1.2 Extensions

mxODBC extends the DB-API specification in a significant number of ways to

provide access to as many ODBC features as possible. If you want to stay

compatible to other Python DB-API compliant interface, you should only use

those interfaces which are mentioned in the Python DB-API specification

documents.

5.2 mxODBC and the ODBC Specification

Since ODBC is a widely supported standard for accessing databases, it should in

general be possible to use the package with any ODBC version 2.0 - 3.8

compliant ODBC database driver/manager. mxODBC prefers ODBC 3.x over 2.x

in case the driver/manager supports both versions of the standard.

5.2.1 Full access to most ODBC features

The ODBC API is very rich in terms of accessing information about what is stored

in the database. mxODBC makes most of these APIs available as additional

connection and cursor methods and these can be put to good use for database

and schema introspection.

Since many of the parameters and names of the ODBC function names were

mapped directly to Python method names (by dropping the SQL prefix and

converting them to lower-case), we kindly refer you to the Microsoft ODBC

Documentation and your ODBC driver documentation for low-level details on the

various APIs.