Presenters

Michael Bayer, Jason Kirtland, and Jonathan Ellis

Audience

Python experience: intermediate. You should already have some hands-on experience with Python and be comfortable reading modern Python code.

SQL experience: intermediate. We will use subselects and outer joins as as part of the SQL layer.

ORM experience: prior experience with SQLAlchemy or attending the Introduction to SQLAlchemy tutorial is recommended.

Requirements

Python 2.4 and a recent version of SQLAlchemy (likely to be 0.4.1 by PyCon). SQLAlchemy itself only requires Python 2.3 but this tutorial will make use of some more recent features like generator expressions.

Promotional summary

SQLAlchemy is the premier SQL toolkit for Python. SQLAlchemy exposes the full power of SQL while remaining easy to use for the basics, and is flexible enough to work with existing database schemas as well as fresh designs. SQLAlchemy is used in production by leading Python web frameworks Pylons and Turbogears as well as many other web and non-web developers.

This tutorial teaches SQLAlchemy's low-level SQL layer, advanced querying and mapping, and extensions.

Presenter bios

Michael Bayer is a NYC-based software contractor with a decade of experience dealing with relational databases of all shapes and sizes. After writing many homegrown database abstraction layers in such languages as C, Java and Perl, and finally after several years of practice working with a huge multi-server Oracle system for Major League Baseball, he wrote SQLAlchemy as the 'ultimate toolset' for generating SQL and dealing with databases overall. The goal is to contribute towards a world-class one-of-a-kind toolset for Python, helping to make Python the universally popular programming platform it deserves to be.