Re: Confusion over Python drivers

On 2/7/10, Greg Smith <greg(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> Marko Kreen wrote:
> > Psycopg was the leader, especially in web-environments,
> > but it has non-obvious license and with dead website it does not
> > seem that attractive. Although it is well-maintained still.
> > Best path forward would be to talk with Psycopg guys about
> > license clarification/change.
>
> Agreed. A relicensed Psycopg, with a more professional looking
> introduction/documentation page (like the budding page on our Wiki) than
> what the initd web site has, seems like the best platform to hack on top of
> to me as well. The fact that they've moved to git recently makes it that
> much easier for another branch to exist even outside of their somewhat
> troubled infrastructure.
>
> To summarize what I saw on this thread, the primary wishlist of changes to
> it are:
>
> -License change

Note that as long they use non-BSD licence, they need the exception
for the horror that is the OpenSSL licence.

So you cannot 100% satisfy the one-click-lawyers.

> -Consider refactoring to better follow standard driver practices, such as
> using PQExecParams

This is long-term todo item for psycopg, seems offtopic
to the "driver situation".

> -Improvement in transaction control to resolve issues that cause idle
> transactions

This is routine bug in either app or psycopg, we have no reason
to touch it. The guy should report to appropriate lists.

> -Possible simplifications in how it's implemented async operations, to
> improve robustness/reduce code complexity

Long-term todo item for psycopg2, offtopic for "driver situation".

> -Confirm/add multi-threaded support.

Seems psycopg2 already has good enough threading.

> -Confirm/add support for the most common standard types (such as array)

psycopg2 has array support, I'd like to have tuple/record also.

Minor todo item for psycopg, mostly but not completely offtopic
for "driver situation".

> > PyGreSQL is the oldest, older than DB-API, and so it's DB-API
> > interface seems an afterthought and is untested/underused - eg.
> > it does not support bytea.
> >
> >
> And if Psycopg can't be relicensed happily and/or improved as above, as the
> only other native Python driver PyGreSQL looks like the next candidate to
> build on top of. Its major issues are:
>
> -Test/complete/refactor for full DB-API 2.0 support
> -Add bytea support

timestamp/timestamptz also...

> -Add extension support, perhaps modeled on what Psycopg.
> -Build a COPY extension

They seems to have the low-level parts, just they are missing
from DB-API interface.

> -Confirm/add multi-threaded support
> -Confirm/add support for the most common standard types (such as array)
>
> Any other suggestions before I turn the above into a roadmap page on the
> wiki?

I think we should concentrate on the PR problem and technical issues
related to that, keep the other low-level and non-user-visible
issues out. Or at least separate. (PsycopgTodo wiki page?)

--
marko