SQL ALCHEMY

SQLAlchemy The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

It is an open source SQL toolkit and object-relational mapper for the Python programming language released under the MIT License.

SQLAlchemy was first released in February, 2006 and has quickly become one of two prominent object-relational mapping tools in usage by the Python community (the other being SQLObject).

SQLAlchemy provides "a full suite of well known enterprise-level persistence patterns, designed for efficient and high-performing database access, adapted into a simple and Pythonic domain language". SQLAlchemy's philosophy is that SQL databases behave less and less like object collections the more size and performance start to matter, while object collections behave less and less like tables and rows the more abstraction starts to matter. For this reason it has (like Hibernate for Java) adopted the Data Mapper pattern rather than the active record pattern used by a number of other object-relational mappers.

It provides a full suite of well known enterprise-level persistence patterns, designed for efficient and high-performing database access, adapted into a simple and Pythonic domain language.

SQL databases behave less and less like object collections the more size and performance start to matter; object collections behave less and less like tables and rows the more abstraction starts to matter. SQLAlchemy aims to accommodate both of these principles.