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Tools for data storage

In addition to lists and tuples, Python's dictionary data class is widely used and may be adequate if persistence is not required. Check out the recommended documentation referenced via the PYTHON menu on the left.

Relational Databases (DBs)

The python.org website has a section devoted to DBs and contains links to general database references. Joel Shprentz' 1997 paper, Persistent Storage of Python Objects in Relational Databases is a readable introduction to Python and relational databases, even if it is a little aged.


Name anydbm, dbm, gdbm and shelve - Native Python DB interface modules.
Description Standard Python includes dictionary/file like interface to operating-system database management tools such as dbm or gdbm. "import anydbm" will import whatever tool is appropriate to the OS and SW version. Use python''s inbuilt help command to find out more. Shelves are really just dbm files that automatically serialise objects into character streams whn they're transferred to and from the dbm file. This serialisation process is called pickling [c.f.] Once either shelf or dmb files are open they are processed as if they were in-memory python dictionaries.
Warnings dbm files only allow (both key and value) data to be stored as character strings. Shelves can store arbitrary data but the keys must be strings.
Comments Useful when persistence is required, the dataset is not too large and fast, complex queries are unnecessary. When processor memory is inadequate for data storage and access using these inbuild python tools is inadequate, specialised database tools are necessary. Interfaces to MySQL seem to be the most complete.

Name MySQLdb
Description MySQLdb is an thread-compatible python Application Program Interface (API) to the popular MySQL database server. The MySQL C API has been encapsulated in an object-oriented way. The only MySQL data structures which are implemented are the "MYSQL" (database connection handle) and "MYSQL_RES" (result handle) types. MySQLdb assumes you are familiar with MySQL: it is really just a "dumb" client interface which passes a restricted set of MySQL commands and receives the results of those queries from MySQL servers which are either installed on your computer or accessible via the internet. Usage details and examples are available in the documentation with the download.
Principal reference sourceforge mySQL site
License GPL, Python License (CNRI Python License), Zope Public License
Documentation sourceforge mySQL document section
Downloads Local Server software   MySQLserver
Version 5.0
Warnings Familiarity with MySQL is a necessity. Make sure you get the right version of the MySQL server for your hardware and Operating System. The following OSX applications, available from the MySQL site, are also useful: MySQL Administrator, MySQL Query Browser and (perhaps less useful, MySQL Workbench). FOR OSX, there is also a System Preference tool for starting and stopping the MySQL server and a dashboarf tool for monitoring the MySQL database activity.
Comments MySQLdb as a basic tool. It is really just a way of using python to send SQL to the MySQL database server. A more abstracted inerface would be more powerful.

If you find typing MySQLdb all the time annoying, use "import MySQLdb as mysqldb"

The MySQLdb.com site emphasises the commercial server (called MySQL Enterprice). The MySQL Communty Server is free and perfectly adequate if 3rd party DB support is not needed.
    
Name SQLObject
Description SQLObject is an Object Relational Manager (ORM) for providing an object interface to a database, with tables as classes, rows as instances, and columns as attributes.
SQLObject includes a Python object-based query language that makes SQL more abstract, and provides substantial database independence for applications.
Principal reference sqloject.org
Documentation There is an active community and a useful beginners tutorial.
Downloads sqlobject.org download
Version 0.9
Dependencies MySQLserver- see above.
Warnings None
Comments A suitable abstraction of relational database technology to make it object-oriented. Large user group; well supported.

There is a (simpler) sourceforge project named ForgetSQL which appears to be older, unfinished and perhaps unsupported.

Even more general is SQL Alchemy, which we have not extensively evaluated. It may be overkill but it is connected through to Twisted and can apparently be used with Oracle databases.

    
Name pyTables
Description PyTables is a hierarchical database package designed to efficently manage very large amounts of data. PyTables is built on top of the HDF5 library and the numarray package. It features an object-oriented interface that, combined with natural naming and C-code generated from Pyrex sources, makes it a fast, yet extremely easy to use tool for interactively save and retrieve large amounts of data. pyTables differs from PyHL interface to HDF5 (see below) in that PyTables has a completely object-oriented interface, rather that the more function-oriented approach of PyHL. There is a professional version PyTablesPro for faster cross-object searching.
Principal reference PyTables website  pyTablesPro
License PyTables is free for use under BSD terms
Documentation PyTablesMoin FAQ is a good place to start
An article entitled Portable Data with PyTables, published in the April 2008 issue of Python magazine (Volume 2 Issue 4) gives a good idea of how PyTables is helping users to work with HDF5 files.
Downloads SVN and easy_install from the Pytables website.
Version 2.1
Dependencies
Warnings None
Comments Hierarchical Data Format library version 5, (HDF5) is a versatile, mature scientific software library designed at NCSA supercomputing facility for the fast, flexible storage of enormous amounts of data. It provides a robust way to store data, organized by name in a tree-like fashion.  With HDF5, extremely large datasets (hundreds of gigabytes in size) are organized in a filesystem-like hierarchy using containers called "groups" an accessed using the tradional POSIX /path/to/resource syntax. For more details, see the hdfgroup website.
    
Name pyHL
Description PyHL allows the user to work with HDF5 at a high level. It is actually a wrapper around HL-HDF but with some additional functionality high-level. Like HL-HDF, it is up to the user to define appropriate ways of representing data and using the building blocks available in PyHL to store the data in HDF5. PyHL is pronounced ``pile'', which is an appropriate description of a heirarchy ...
Principal reference on hdfgroup website
Documentation On the hdfgroup website
Downloads from hdfgroup
Version 2.1
Dependencies
Warnings Current development status unknown. PyTables (above) has been more extensively tested and  is the preferred API to HDF5
Comments Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 by the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute (SMHI), Norrköping, Sweden.


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