Oracle

URL: http://www.oracle.com/index.html
FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com/
Wiki: http://www.orawiki.com/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_database
license: commercial/proprietary; free for development from Oracle Technology Network; Oracle XE is free for production and development (and an excellent option all-around)
platforms: Unix, Linux, win32, win64

Pros

Reputation for being capable of handling large scale databases
Typically the database system others compare themselves to

Cons

Usually requires bloated Oracle client installation on any machine that the app will run on
Frequently the subject of migration discussions (to alternatives), usually for reasons of cost

DB API 2.0 Drivers

cx_Oracle

URL: http://cx-oracle.sourceforge.net/
licence: BSD like
platforms: Unix, win32
Python versions: 2.5 - 3.2
Oracle versions: 10i - 11g
Last release: 5.1 (March 19, 2011)

DCOracle2

URL: http://www.zope.org/Members/matt/dco2
licence: ZPL
platforms: Unix, win32
Python versions
Last release: 1.3beta (Feb 10, 2003)

DCOracle2 targets Oracle 8i and up.

There also is DCOracle (http://www.zope.org/Products/DCOracle/) for the older Oracle 7 and 8 versions, but this is unmaintained.

mxODBC

URL: http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxODBC/
Licence: eGenix Commercial License
Platforms: Windows, Linux, MacOS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, AIX
Python versions: 2.4 - 2.7

mxODBC is compatible with the Oracle ODBC drivers on Windows and Unix, such as the ones included in the Oracle Instant Client.

pyodbc

URL: https://github.com/mkleehammer/pyodbc
License: MIT
Platforms: Windows, Linux, MacOS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, Any (source provided)
Python versions: 2.4 - 2.6

Actively maintained Open Source project.

Precompiled binaries are available for Windows. RedHat Enterprise Linux, Centos, and Fedora have precompiled RPMs available in their Extras repositories.

OJDBC and JayDeBeApi

URL: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/JayDeBeApi
licence: LGPL
platforms: Any (requires Java)
Python versions: Tested on CPython 2.6.6 and Jython 2.5.2
Oracle versions: Any supported by Oracle's JDBC drivers (currently 8.1.7 to 11.2.0.2.0)
Last release: 0.1 (2010-08-16)

No InstantClient required. Download an Oracle JDBC driver (the filename will be something like ojdbc6.jar) from the Oracle website, and set the classpath to include the driver. Note that if not running under Jython, JPype is required. Use code like the following:

   1 environ['JAVA_HOME'] = '/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre'
   2 jpype.startJVM(jpype.getDefaultJVMPath(), '-Djava.class.path=ojdbc6.jar')
   3 conn = jaydebeapi.connect('oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver', 'jdbc:oracle:thin:user/pass@server:1521:dbname')

mxODBC Connect

URL: http://www.egenix.com/products/python/mxODBCConnect/
License: eGenix Commercial License 1.3.0
Platforms: Client: all Python platforms; Server: Windows, Linux
Python versions: 2.5 - 2.7

mxODBC Connect is a commercial client-server product that allows connecting Python to ODBC compatible databases running on remote servers without requiring an ODBC driver on the client side. The product uses mxODBC on the server side and provides a highly portable Python library for the client side. As such it supports all database backend that mxODBC supports, but allows connecting to these from many different Python-supported platforms.

mxODBC Connect supports asynchronous query execution via the popular gevent package, provides secure certificate based authentication, SSL encrypted database connections, comes with full support for stored procedures, multiple result sets, Unicode, a common interface on all platforms and implements many other useful features.

mxODBC Connect Server is compatible with the Oracle Instant Client ODBC drivers.

Supported Python Applications

Zope
an Oracle (DCOracle and DCOracle2) driver exists for PyDO (Python Data Objects)

Web Links

Oracle Forum

Oracle Wiki's: English German

Oracle Documentation: 10g 9i 8i 7

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