Hand Coded Applications with SQLAlchemy

Author

  • Michael Bayer

What’s a Database

  • We can put data in and get it out
  • Can do queries that allow us to find records with attributes

Relational Database

  • Can create derived tables with suqueries
  • Set operations
  • ACID

How Talk to DB

  • DBAPI
  • Abstraction layers

ORM

  • Maps to relations
  • Can map to multiple relations
  • Can map object heirarchies to tables
  • How abstract should these be? * Should document stores work?
  • Relational features are under/misused which causes the mismatch
  • Best to not hide, but to automate
  • Explicit decisions and automation is “hand-coded”

Hand-Coded

  • Make decisions about everything
  • Automate these decisions for ease
  • Opposite of “wizards”, “plugins”, and APIs that make implementation decisions
  • Can still use libraries and frameworks

Polymorphic Association

  • Map multiple classes to something using GenericReferences
  • Does magic for us
  • Sometimes called GenericForeignKey
  • This breaks the C in ACID * Can generate FK that doesn’t point to anything
  • Implicit design decisions * Magic tables * source code stored as data, which is coupling * Application layer responsible for consistency

SQLAlchemy’s Response

  • Declarative Base * Composable patterns
  • HasOwner, and PortfolioAssets defaults
  • Define convention for polymorphic association