Extensions and Caveats
KInterbasDB offers a large feature set beyond the minimal requirements
of the Python DB API. Most of these extensions are documented in the
section of this document entitled Native Database Engine Features and
Extensions Beyond the Python DB API.
This section attempts to document only those features that overlap
with the DB API, or are too insignificant to warrant their own
subsection elsewhere.
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kinterbasdb.connect()
This function supports the following optional keyword arguments in addition
to those required by the spec:
| Role: | For connecting to a database with a specific SQL role. |
|---|
Example:
kinterbasdb.connect(dsn='host:/path/database.db', user='limited_user',
password='pass', role='MORE_POWERFUL_ROLE')
| Charset: | For explicitly specifying the character set of the connection.
See Firebird Documentation for a list of available character sets, and
Unicode Fields and KInterbasDB section for information on handling
extended character sets with KInterbasDB. |
|---|
Example:
kinterbasdb.connect(dsn='host:/path/database.db', user='sysdba',
password='pass', charset='UTF8')
| Dialect: | The SQL dialect is feature for backward compatibility with Interbase® 5.5
or earlier. The default dialect is 3 (the most featureful dialect, default
for Firebird). If you want to connect to legacy databases, you must
explicitly set this argument’s value to 1. Dialect 2 is a transitional
dialect that is normally used only during ports from IB < 6 to IB >= 6
or Firebird. See Firebird documentation for more information about
SQL Dialects. |
|---|
Example:
kinterbasdb.connect(dsn='host:/path/database.db', user='sysdba',
password='pass', dialect=1)
| Timeout: | (Optional) Dictionary with timeout and action specification. See section
about Connection Timeouts for details. |
|---|
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class kinterbasdb.Connection
-
charset
- (read-only) The character set of the connection (set via the charset
parameter of kinterbasdb.connect()). See Firebird Documentation for a list
of available character sets, and Unicode Fields and KInterbasDB section
for information on handling extended character sets with KInterbasDB.
-
dialect
- This integer attribute indicates which SQL dialect the connection is using.
You should not change a connection’s dialect; instead, discard the connection
and establish a new one with the desired dialect. For more information, see
the documentation of the dialect argument of the connect function.
-
server_version
- (read-only) The version string of the database server to which this connection
is connected. For example, a connection to Firebird 1.0 on Windows has the following
server_version: WI-V6.2.794 Firebird 1.0
-
execute_immediate()
Executes a statement without caching its prepared form. The statement must not be
of a type that returns a result set. In most cases (especially cases in which the same
statement – perhaps a parameterized statement – is executed repeatedly),
it is better to create a cursor using the connection’s cursor method, then execute
the statement using one of the cursor’s execute methods.
Arguments:
| Sql: | String containing the SQL statement to execute. |
|---|
-
precision_mode
- Although this attribute is present in KInterbasDB 3.1+ and works in a backward-compatible
fashion, it is deprecated in favor of the more general dynamic type translation feature.
-
commit(retaining=False)
-
rollback(retaining=False)
- The commit and rollback methods accept an optional boolean parameter retaining
(default False) that indicates whether the transactional context of the transaction
being resolved should be recycled. For details, see the Advanced
Transaction Control: Retaining Operations section of this document.
The rollback method accepts an optional string parameter savepoint
that causes the transaction to roll back only as far as the designated
savepoint, rather than rolling back entirely. For details, see the
Advanced Transaction Control: Savepoints section of this document.
-
class kinterbasdb.Cursor
-
description
KInterbasDB makes absolutely no guarantees about description except those
required by the Python Database API Specification 2.0 (that is, description
is either None or a sequence of 7-element sequences). Therefore, client
programmers should not rely on description being an instance of a particular
class or type. KInterbasDB provides several named positional constants to be
used as indices into a given element of description . The contents
of all description elements are defined by the DB API spec; these
constants are provided merely for convenience.
DESCRIPTION_NAME
DESCRIPTION_TYPE_CODE
DESCRIPTION_DISPLAY_SIZE
DESCRIPTION_INTERNAL_SIZE
DESCRIPTION_PRECISION
DESCRIPTION_SCALE
DESCRIPTION_NULL_OK
Here is an example of accessing the name of the first field in the
description of cursor cur:
nameOfFirstField = cur.description[0][kinterbasdb.DESCRIPTION_NAME]
For more information, see the documentation of Cursor.description in
the DB API Specification.
-
rowcount
- Although KInterbasDB’s Cursor`s implement this
attribute, the database engine’s own support for the determination of
“rows affected”/”rows selected” is quirky. The database engine only
supports the determination of rowcount for `INSERT, UPDATE,
DELETE, and SELECT statements. When stored procedures become
involved, row count figures are usually not available to the client.
Determining rowcount for SELECT statements is problematic: the
rowcount is reported as zero until at least one row has been fetched
from the result set, and the rowcount is misreported if the result set
is larger than 1302 rows. The server apparently marshals result sets
internally in batches of 1302, and will misreport the rowcount for
result sets larger than 1302 rows until the 1303rd row is fetched,
result sets larger than 2604 rows until the 2605th row is fetched, and
so on, in increments of 1302. As required by the Python DB API Spec,
the rowcount attribute “is -1 in case no executeXX() has been
performed on the cursor or the rowcount of the last operation is not
determinable by the interface”.
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fetchone()
-
fetchmany()
-
fetchall()
- KInterbasDB makes absolutely no guarantees about
the return value of the fetchone / fetchmany / fetchall methods
except that it is a sequence indexed by field position. KInterbasDB
makes absolutely no guarantees about the return value of the
fetchonemap / fetchmanymap / fetchallmap methods (documented
below) except that it is a mapping of field name to field value.
Therefore, client programmers should not rely on the return value
being an instance of a particular class or type.
-
fetchonemap()
- This method is just like the standard
fetchone method of the DB API, except that it returns a mapping of
field name to field value, rather than a sequence.
-
fetchmanymap()
- This method is just like the standard
fetchmany method of the DB API, except that it returns a sequence of
mappings of field name to field value, rather than a sequence of
sequences.
-
fetchallmap()
- This method is just like the standard
fetchall method of the DB API, except that it returns a sequence of
mappings of field name to field value, rather than a sequence of
sequences.
-
iter()
-
itermap()
- These methods are equivalent to the
fetchall and fetchallmap methods, respectively, except that they
return iterators rather than materialized sequences. iter and
itermap are exercised in this example.