Today I’ve been playing a little with Python Web Modules (aka PythonWeb). While deciding which database I would use for session management and other data persistance I found that PythonWeb comes with built-in support for SnakeSQL, a pure Python relational database. Of course, it supports MySQL and potentially other database engines, but I was intrigued by this little database and decided to try it out.

What was very nice to see is that the database doesn’t require any installation, its engine can be placed somewhere on the path and you can start working. It doesn’t rely on any C code, which makes it somewhat slow, but the beauty is that it will run on any platform which can be very handy for small web services and their hastle free installation on various hosts (no C compilation required and no need for setting up external databases). It comes with a simple, but fully usable interactive interpreter and it supports a surprisingly rich set of SQL features for its small footprint.

SnakeSQL is still in alpha, but so far it’s performing extremelly well. I’ll stick to it for now. If you are looking for pure Python databases, you might also want to check Gadfly.

Tags: SnakeSQL, Python, PythonWeb, Python Database