Common ways to connect to odbc from python on windows? [closed]
Question
What library should I use to connect to odbc from python on windows? Is there a good alternative for pywin32 when it comes to odbc?
I'm looking for something well-documented, robust, actively maintained, etc. pyodbc
looks good -- are there any others?
Solution
You already suggested pyodbc, and I am going to agree with you.
It has given me the least amount of issues in my experience; I've used pymssql and adodbapi, and when those threw exceptions/created issues, I swapped out the code and replaced it with pyodbc and it either fixed the problem, or gave better error messages so I could debug faster.
It's worth mentioning that I primarily use it to connect to MSSQL Server DBs.
OTHER TIPS
I use SQLAlchemy for all python database access. I highly recommend SQLAlchemy.
SA uses pyodbc under the hood when connecting to SQL server databases. It uses other DBAPI libraries to connect to other database, for instance cx_Oracle.
A simplistic example, using SQLAlchemy like you would normally use a DBAPI module:
import sqlalchemy
engine = sqlalchemy.create_engine('sqlite:///database.db')
for r in engine.execute('SELECT * FROM T'):
print(r.OneColumn, r.OtherColumn)
But the real value of SQLAlchemy lies in its ORM and SQL expression language. Have a look, it is well worth the effort to learn to use.
Another alternative is pypyodbc which was written in pure Python. it can been seen as a re-implemenation of the pyodbc module – with only around 1800 lines code, which is good for maintenance.
I use pyodbc at work and it has never failed me (we have varius dbs). It is robust and fast.
It is actively maintained and a python 3 version will come soon.
If you want "enterprise" software with payed support you can use mxODBC.
You can give turbodbc a spin. Since version 1.1.1, it officially supports Windows. There's a good chance that it is faster than pyodbc for what you do.
Python 3 is now supported by pyodbc!