SQLAlchemy 1.4 Documentation
Changes and Migration
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 1.4?
- Migrating to SQLAlchemy 2.0
- 1.4 Changelog
- 1.3 Changelog
- 1.2 Changelog
- 1.1 Changelog
- 1.0 Changelog
- 0.9 Changelog
- 0.8 Changelog
- 0.7 Changelog
- 0.6 Changelog
- 0.5 Changelog
- 0.4 Changelog
- 0.3 Changelog
- 0.2 Changelog
- 0.1 Changelog
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 1.3?
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 1.2?
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 1.1?
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 1.0?
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 0.9?
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 0.8?
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 0.7?
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 0.6?¶
- Platform Support
- New Dialect System
- Expression Language Changes
- C Extensions for Result Fetching
- New Schema Capabilities
- Logging opened up
- Reflection/Inspector API
- RETURNING Support
- Type System Changes
- ORM Changes
- New Unit of Work
- Changes to
query.update()
andquery.delete()
relation()
is officially namedrelationship()
- Subquery eager loading
`eagerload()``
,``eagerload_all()``
is now``joinedload()``
,``joinedload_all()`
`lazy=False|None|True|'dynamic'``
now accepts``lazy='noload'|'joined'|'subquery'|'select'|'dynamic'`
- innerjoin=True on relation, joinedload
- Many-to-one Enhancements
- Mutable Primary Keys with Joined Table Inheritance
- Beaker Caching
- Other Changes
- Deprecated/Removed ORM Elements
- Extensions
- What’s new in SQLAlchemy 0.5?
- What’s new in SQLAlchemy 0.4?
Project Versions
- Previous: What’s New in SQLAlchemy 0.7?
- Next: What’s new in SQLAlchemy 0.5?
- Up: Home
- On this page:
- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 0.6?
- Platform Support
- New Dialect System
- Expression Language Changes
- C Extensions for Result Fetching
- New Schema Capabilities
- Logging opened up
- Reflection/Inspector API
- RETURNING Support
- Type System Changes
- ORM Changes
- New Unit of Work
- Changes to
query.update()
andquery.delete()
relation()
is officially namedrelationship()
- Subquery eager loading
`eagerload()``
,``eagerload_all()``
is now``joinedload()``
,``joinedload_all()`
`lazy=False|None|True|'dynamic'``
now accepts``lazy='noload'|'joined'|'subquery'|'select'|'dynamic'`
- innerjoin=True on relation, joinedload
- Many-to-one Enhancements
- Mutable Primary Keys with Joined Table Inheritance
- Beaker Caching
- Other Changes
- Deprecated/Removed ORM Elements
- Extensions
What’s New in SQLAlchemy 0.6?¶
About this Document
This document describes changes between SQLAlchemy version 0.5, last released January 16, 2010, and SQLAlchemy version 0.6, last released May 5, 2012.
Document date: June 6, 2010
This guide documents API changes which affect users migrating their applications from the 0.5 series of SQLAlchemy to 0.6. Note that SQLAlchemy 0.6 removes some behaviors which were deprecated throughout the span of the 0.5 series, and also deprecates more behaviors specific to 0.5.
Platform Support¶
cPython versions 2.4 and upwards throughout the 2.xx series
Jython 2.5.1 - using the zxJDBC DBAPI included with Jython.
cPython 3.x - see [source:sqlalchemy/trunk/README.py3k] for information on how to build for python3.
New Dialect System¶
Dialect modules are now broken up into distinct
subcomponents, within the scope of a single database
backend. Dialect implementations are now in the
sqlalchemy.dialects
package. The
sqlalchemy.databases
package still exists as a
placeholder to provide some level of backwards compatibility
for simple imports.
For each supported database, a sub-package exists within
sqlalchemy.dialects
where several files are contained.
Each package contains a module called base.py
which
defines the specific SQL dialect used by that database. It
also contains one or more “driver” modules, each one
corresponding to a specific DBAPI - these files are named
corresponding to the DBAPI itself, such as pysqlite
,
cx_oracle
, or pyodbc
. The classes used by
SQLAlchemy dialects are first declared in the base.py
module, defining all behavioral characteristics defined by
the database. These include capability mappings, such as
“supports sequences”, “supports returning”, etc., type
definitions, and SQL compilation rules. Each “driver”
module in turn provides subclasses of those classes as
needed which override the default behavior to accommodate
the additional features, behaviors, and quirks of that
DBAPI. For DBAPIs that support multiple backends (pyodbc,
zxJDBC, mxODBC), the dialect module will use mixins from the
sqlalchemy.connectors
package, which provide
functionality common to that DBAPI across all backends, most
typically dealing with connect arguments. This means that
connecting using pyodbc, zxJDBC or mxODBC (when implemented)
is extremely consistent across supported backends.
The URL format used by create_engine()
has been enhanced
to handle any number of DBAPIs for a particular backend,
using a scheme that is inspired by that of JDBC. The
previous format still works, and will select a “default”
DBAPI implementation, such as the PostgreSQL URL below that
will use psycopg2:
create_engine("postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost/test")
However to specify a specific DBAPI backend such as pg8000, add it to the “protocol” section of the URL using a plus sign “+”:
create_engine("postgresql+pg8000://scott:tiger@localhost/test")
Important Dialect Links:
Documentation on connect arguments: https://www.sqlalchemy.org/docs/06/dbengine.html#create- engine-url-arguments.
Reference documentation for individual dialects: https://ww w.sqlalchemy.org/docs/06/reference/dialects/index.html
The tips and tricks at DatabaseNotes.
Other notes regarding dialects:
the type system has been changed dramatically in SQLAlchemy 0.6. This has an impact on all dialects regarding naming conventions, behaviors, and implementations. See the section on “Types” below.
the
ResultProxy
object now offers a 2x speed improvement in some cases thanks to some refactorings.the
RowProxy
, i.e. individual result row object, is now directly pickleable.the setuptools entrypoint used to locate external dialects is now called
sqlalchemy.dialects
. An external dialect written against 0.4 or 0.5 will need to be modified to work with 0.6 in any case so this change does not add any additional difficulties.dialects now receive an initialize() event on initial connection to determine connection properties.
Functions and operators generated by the compiler now use (almost) regular dispatch functions of the form “visit_<opname>” and “visit_<funcname>_fn” to provide customed processing. This replaces the need to copy the “functions” and “operators” dictionaries in compiler subclasses with straightforward visitor methods, and also allows compiler subclasses complete control over rendering, as the full _Function or _BinaryExpression object is passed in.
Dialect Imports¶
The import structure of dialects has changed. Each dialect
now exports its base “dialect” class as well as the full set
of SQL types supported on that dialect via
sqlalchemy.dialects.<name>
. For example, to import a
set of PG types:
from sqlalchemy.dialects.postgresql import (
INTEGER,
BIGINT,
SMALLINT,
VARCHAR,
MACADDR,
DATE,
BYTEA,
)
Above, INTEGER
is actually the plain INTEGER
type
from sqlalchemy.types
, but the PG dialect makes it
available in the same way as those types which are specific
to PG, such as BYTEA
and MACADDR
.
Expression Language Changes¶
An Important Expression Language Gotcha¶
There’s one quite significant behavioral change to the
expression language which may affect some applications.
The boolean value of Python boolean expressions, i.e.
==
, !=
, and similar, now evaluates accurately with
regards to the two clause objects being compared.
As we know, comparing a ClauseElement
to any other
object returns another ClauseElement
:
>>> from sqlalchemy.sql import column
>>> column("foo") == 5
<sqlalchemy.sql.expression._BinaryExpression object at 0x1252490>
This so that Python expressions produce SQL expressions when converted to strings:
>>> str(column("foo") == 5)
'foo = :foo_1'
But what happens if we say this?
>>> if column("foo") == 5:
... print("yes")
In previous versions of SQLAlchemy, the returned
_BinaryExpression
was a plain Python object which
evaluated to True
. Now it evaluates to whether or not
the actual ClauseElement
should have the same hash value
as to that being compared. Meaning:
>>> bool(column("foo") == 5)
False
>>> bool(column("foo") == column("foo"))
False
>>> c = column("foo")
>>> bool(c == c)
True
>>>
That means code such as the following:
if expression:
print("the expression is:", expression)
Would not evaluate if expression
was a binary clause.
Since the above pattern should never be used, the base
ClauseElement
now raises an exception if called in a
boolean context:
>>> bool(c)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
...
raise TypeError("Boolean value of this clause is not defined")
TypeError: Boolean value of this clause is not defined
Code that wants to check for the presence of a
ClauseElement
expression should instead say:
if expression is not None:
print("the expression is:", expression)
Keep in mind, this applies to Table and Column objects too.
The rationale for the change is twofold:
Comparisons of the form
if c1 == c2: <do something>
can actually be written nowSupport for correct hashing of
ClauseElement
objects now works on alternate platforms, namely Jython. Up until this point SQLAlchemy relied heavily on the specific behavior of cPython in this regard (and still had occasional problems with it).
Stricter “executemany” Behavior¶
An “executemany” in SQLAlchemy corresponds to a call to
execute()
, passing along a collection of bind parameter
sets:
connection.execute(table.insert(), {"data": "row1"}, {"data": "row2"}, {"data": "row3"})
When the Connection
object sends off the given
insert()
construct for compilation, it passes to the
compiler the keynames present in the first set of binds
passed along to determine the construction of the
statement’s VALUES clause. Users familiar with this
construct will know that additional keys present in the
remaining dictionaries don’t have any impact. What’s
different now is that all subsequent dictionaries need to
include at least every key that is present in the first
dictionary. This means that a call like this no longer
works:
connection.execute(
table.insert(),
{"timestamp": today, "data": "row1"},
{"timestamp": today, "data": "row2"},
{"data": "row3"},
)
Because the third row does not specify the ‘timestamp’
column. Previous versions of SQLAlchemy would simply insert
NULL for these missing columns. However, if the
timestamp
column in the above example contained a
Python-side default value or function, it would not be
used. This because the “executemany” operation is optimized
for maximum performance across huge numbers of parameter
sets, and does not attempt to evaluate Python-side defaults
for those missing keys. Because defaults are often
implemented either as SQL expressions which are embedded
inline with the INSERT statement, or are server side
expressions which again are triggered based on the structure
of the INSERT string, which by definition cannot fire off
conditionally based on each parameter set, it would be
inconsistent for Python side defaults to behave differently
vs. SQL/server side defaults. (SQL expression based
defaults are embedded inline as of the 0.5 series, again to
minimize the impact of huge numbers of parameter sets).
SQLAlchemy 0.6 therefore establishes predictable consistency by forbidding any subsequent parameter sets from leaving any fields blank. That way, there’s no more silent failure of Python side default values and functions, which additionally are allowed to remain consistent in their behavior versus SQL and server side defaults.
UNION and other “compound” constructs parenthesize consistently¶
A rule that was designed to help SQLite has been removed,
that of the first compound element within another compound
(such as, a union()
inside of an except_()
) wouldn’t
be parenthesized. This is inconsistent and produces the
wrong results on PostgreSQL, which has precedence rules
regarding INTERSECTION, and its generally a surprise. When
using complex composites with SQLite, you now need to turn
the first element into a subquery (which is also compatible
on PG). A new example is in the SQL expression tutorial at
the end of
[https://www.sqlalchemy.org/docs/06/sqlexpression.html
#unions-and-other-set-operations]. See #1665 and
r6690 for more background.
C Extensions for Result Fetching¶
The ResultProxy
and related elements, including most
common “row processing” functions such as unicode
conversion, numerical/boolean conversions and date parsing,
have been re-implemented as optional C extensions for the
purposes of performance. This represents the beginning of
SQLAlchemy’s path to the “dark side” where we hope to
continue improving performance by reimplementing critical
sections in C. The extensions can be built by specifying
--with-cextensions
, i.e. python setup.py --with-
cextensions install
.
The extensions have the most dramatic impact on result
fetching using direct ResultProxy
access, i.e. that
which is returned by engine.execute()
,
connection.execute()
, or session.execute()
. Within
results returned by an ORM Query
object, result fetching
is not as high a percentage of overhead, so ORM performance
improves more modestly, and mostly in the realm of fetching
large result sets. The performance improvements highly
depend on the dbapi in use and on the syntax used to access
the columns of each row (eg row['name']
is much faster
than row.name
). The current extensions have no impact
on the speed of inserts/updates/deletes, nor do they improve
the latency of SQL execution, that is, an application that
spends most of its time executing many statements with very
small result sets will not see much improvement.
Performance has been improved in 0.6 versus 0.5 regardless
of the extensions. A quick overview of what connecting and
fetching 50,000 rows looks like with SQLite, using mostly
direct SQLite access, a ResultProxy
, and a simple mapped
ORM object:
sqlite select/native: 0.260s
0.6 / C extension
sqlalchemy.sql select: 0.360s
sqlalchemy.orm fetch: 2.500s
0.6 / Pure Python
sqlalchemy.sql select: 0.600s
sqlalchemy.orm fetch: 3.000s
0.5 / Pure Python
sqlalchemy.sql select: 0.790s
sqlalchemy.orm fetch: 4.030s
Above, the ORM fetches the rows 33% faster than 0.5 due to
in-python performance enhancements. With the C extensions
we get another 20%. However, ResultProxy
fetches
improve by 67% with the C extension versus not. Other
tests report as much as a 200% speed improvement for some
scenarios, such as those where lots of string conversions
are occurring.
New Schema Capabilities¶
The sqlalchemy.schema
package has received some long-
needed attention. The most visible change is the newly
expanded DDL system. In SQLAlchemy, it was possible since
version 0.5 to create custom DDL strings and associate them
with tables or metadata objects:
from sqlalchemy.schema import DDL
DDL("CREATE TRIGGER users_trigger ...").execute_at("after-create", metadata)
Now the full suite of DDL constructs are available under the same system, including those for CREATE TABLE, ADD CONSTRAINT, etc.:
from sqlalchemy.schema import Constraint, AddConstraint
AddContraint(CheckConstraint("value > 5")).execute_at("after-create", mytable)
Additionally, all the DDL objects are now regular
ClauseElement
objects just like any other SQLAlchemy
expression object:
from sqlalchemy.schema import CreateTable
create = CreateTable(mytable)
# dumps the CREATE TABLE as a string
print(create)
# executes the CREATE TABLE statement
engine.execute(create)
and using the sqlalchemy.ext.compiler
extension you can
make your own:
from sqlalchemy.schema import DDLElement
from sqlalchemy.ext.compiler import compiles
class AlterColumn(DDLElement):
def __init__(self, column, cmd):
self.column = column
self.cmd = cmd
@compiles(AlterColumn)
def visit_alter_column(element, compiler, **kw):
return "ALTER TABLE %s ALTER COLUMN %s %s ..." % (
element.column.table.name,
element.column.name,
element.cmd,
)
engine.execute(AlterColumn(table.c.mycolumn, "SET DEFAULT 'test'"))
Deprecated/Removed Schema Elements¶
The schema package has also been greatly streamlined. Many options and methods which were deprecated throughout 0.5 have been removed. Other little known accessors and methods have also been removed.
the “owner” keyword argument is removed from
Table
. Use “schema” to represent any namespaces to be prepended to the table name.deprecated
MetaData.connect()
andThreadLocalMetaData.connect()
have been removed - send the “bind” attribute to bind a metadata.deprecated metadata.table_iterator() method removed (use sorted_tables)
the “metadata” argument is removed from
DefaultGenerator
and subclasses, but remains locally present onSequence
, which is a standalone construct in DDL.deprecated
PassiveDefault
- useDefaultClause
.Removed public mutability from
Index
andConstraint
objects:ForeignKeyConstraint.append_element()
Index.append_column()
UniqueConstraint.append_column()
PrimaryKeyConstraint.add()
PrimaryKeyConstraint.remove()
These should be constructed declaratively (i.e. in one construction).
Other removed things:
Table.key
(no idea what this was for)Column.bind
(get via column.table.bind)Column.metadata
(get via column.table.metadata)Column.sequence
(use column.default)
Other Behavioral Changes¶
UniqueConstraint
,Index
,PrimaryKeyConstraint
all accept lists of column names or column objects as arguments.The
use_alter
flag onForeignKey
is now a shortcut option for operations that can be hand-constructed using theDDL()
event system. A side effect of this refactor is thatForeignKeyConstraint
objects withuse_alter=True
will not be emitted on SQLite, which does not support ALTER for foreign keys. This has no effect on SQLite’s behavior since SQLite does not actually honor FOREIGN KEY constraints.Table.primary_key
is not assignable - usetable.append_constraint(PrimaryKeyConstraint(...))
A
Column
definition with aForeignKey
and no type, e.g.Column(name, ForeignKey(sometable.c.somecol))
used to get the type of the referenced column. Now support for that automatic type inference is partial and may not work in all cases.
Logging opened up¶
At the expense of a few extra method calls here and there,
you can set log levels for INFO and DEBUG after an engine,
pool, or mapper has been created, and logging will commence.
The isEnabledFor(INFO)
method is now called
per-Connection
and isEnabledFor(DEBUG)
per-ResultProxy
if already enabled on the parent
connection. Pool logging sends to log.info()
and
log.debug()
with no check - note that pool
checkout/checkin is typically once per transaction.
Reflection/Inspector API¶
The reflection system, which allows reflection of table
columns via Table('sometable', metadata, autoload=True)
has been opened up into its own fine-grained API, which
allows direct inspection of database elements such as
tables, columns, constraints, indexes, and more. This API
expresses return values as simple lists of strings,
dictionaries, and TypeEngine
objects. The internals of
autoload=True
now build upon this system such that the
translation of raw database information into
sqlalchemy.schema
constructs is centralized and the
contract of individual dialects greatly simplified, vastly
reducing bugs and inconsistencies across different backends.
To use an inspector:
from sqlalchemy.engine.reflection import Inspector
insp = Inspector.from_engine(my_engine)
print(insp.get_schema_names())
the from_engine()
method will in some cases provide a
backend-specific inspector with additional capabilities,
such as that of PostgreSQL which provides a
get_table_oid()
method:
my_engine = create_engine("postgresql://...")
pg_insp = Inspector.from_engine(my_engine)
print(pg_insp.get_table_oid("my_table"))
RETURNING Support¶
The insert()
, update()
and delete()
constructs
now support a returning()
method, which corresponds to
the SQL RETURNING clause as supported by PostgreSQL, Oracle,
MS-SQL, and Firebird. It is not supported for any other
backend at this time.
Given a list of column expressions in the same manner as
that of a select()
construct, the values of these
columns will be returned as a regular result set:
result = connection.execute(
table.insert().values(data="some data").returning(table.c.id, table.c.timestamp)
)
row = result.first()
print("ID:", row["id"], "Timestamp:", row["timestamp"])
The implementation of RETURNING across the four supported backends varies wildly, in the case of Oracle requiring an intricate usage of OUT parameters which are re-routed into a “mock” result set, and in the case of MS-SQL using an awkward SQL syntax. The usage of RETURNING is subject to limitations:
it does not work for any “executemany()” style of execution. This is a limitation of all supported DBAPIs.
Some backends, such as Oracle, only support RETURNING that returns a single row - this includes UPDATE and DELETE statements, meaning the update() or delete() construct must match only a single row, or an error is raised (by Oracle, not SQLAlchemy).
RETURNING is also used automatically by SQLAlchemy, when
available and when not otherwise specified by an explicit
returning()
call, to fetch the value of newly generated
primary key values for single-row INSERT statements. This
means there’s no more “SELECT nextval(sequence)” pre-
execution for insert statements where the primary key value
is required. Truth be told, implicit RETURNING feature
does incur more method overhead than the old “select
nextval()” system, which used a quick and dirty
cursor.execute() to get at the sequence value, and in the
case of Oracle requires additional binding of out
parameters. So if method/protocol overhead is proving to be
more expensive than additional database round trips, the
feature can be disabled by specifying
implicit_returning=False
to create_engine()
.
Type System Changes¶
New Architecture¶
The type system has been completely reworked behind the scenes to provide two goals:
Separate the handling of bind parameters and result row values, typically a DBAPI requirement, from the SQL specification of the type itself, which is a database requirement. This is consistent with the overall dialect refactor that separates database SQL behavior from DBAPI.
Establish a clear and consistent contract for generating DDL from a
TypeEngine
object and for constructingTypeEngine
objects based on column reflection.
Highlights of these changes include:
The construction of types within dialects has been totally overhauled. Dialects now define publicly available types as UPPERCASE names exclusively, and internal implementation types using underscore identifiers (i.e. are private). The system by which types are expressed in SQL and DDL has been moved to the compiler system. This has the effect that there are much fewer type objects within most dialects. A detailed document on this architecture for dialect authors is in [source:/lib/sqlalc hemy/dialects/type_migration_guidelines.txt].
Reflection of types now returns the exact UPPERCASE type within types.py, or the UPPERCASE type within the dialect itself if the type is not a standard SQL type. This means reflection now returns more accurate information about reflected types.
User defined types that subclass
TypeEngine
and wish to provideget_col_spec()
should now subclassUserDefinedType
.The
result_processor()
method on all type classes now accepts an additional argumentcoltype
. This is the DBAPI type object attached to cursor.description, and should be used when applicable to make better decisions on what kind of result-processing callable should be returned. Ideally result processor functions would never need to useisinstance()
, which is an expensive call at this level.
Native Unicode Mode¶
As more DBAPIs support returning Python unicode objects
directly, the base dialect now performs a check upon the
first connection which establishes whether or not the DBAPI
returns a Python unicode object for a basic select of a
VARCHAR value. If so, the String
type and all
subclasses (i.e. Text
, Unicode
, etc.) will skip the
“unicode” check/conversion step when result rows are
received. This offers a dramatic performance increase for
large result sets. The “unicode mode” currently is known to
work with:
sqlite3 / pysqlite
psycopg2 - SQLA 0.6 now uses the “UNICODE” type extension by default on each psycopg2 connection object
pg8000
cx_oracle (we use an output processor - nice feature !)
Other types may choose to disable unicode processing as
needed, such as the NVARCHAR
type when used with MS-SQL.
In particular, if porting an application based on a DBAPI
that formerly returned non-unicode strings, the “native
unicode” mode has a plainly different default behavior -
columns that are declared as String
or VARCHAR
now
return unicode by default whereas they would return strings
before. This can break code which expects non-unicode
strings. The psycopg2 “native unicode” mode can be
disabled by passing use_native_unicode=False
to
create_engine()
.
A more general solution for string columns that explicitly
do not want a unicode object is to use a TypeDecorator
that converts unicode back to utf-8, or whatever is desired:
class UTF8Encoded(TypeDecorator):
"""Unicode type which coerces to utf-8."""
impl = sa.VARCHAR
def process_result_value(self, value, dialect):
if isinstance(value, unicode):
value = value.encode("utf-8")
return value
Note that the assert_unicode
flag is now deprecated.
SQLAlchemy allows the DBAPI and backend database in use to
handle Unicode parameters when available, and does not add
operational overhead by checking the incoming type; modern
systems like sqlite and PostgreSQL will raise an encoding
error on their end if invalid data is passed. In those
cases where SQLAlchemy does need to coerce a bind parameter
from Python Unicode to an encoded string, or when the
Unicode type is used explicitly, a warning is raised if the
object is a bytestring. This warning can be suppressed or
converted to an exception using the Python warnings filter
documented at: https://docs.python.org/library/warnings.html
Generic Enum Type¶
We now have an Enum
in the types
module. This is a
string type that is given a collection of “labels” which
constrain the possible values given to those labels. By
default, this type generates a VARCHAR
using the size of
the largest label, and applies a CHECK constraint to the
table within the CREATE TABLE statement. When using MySQL,
the type by default uses MySQL’s ENUM type, and when using
PostgreSQL the type will generate a user defined type using
CREATE TYPE <mytype> AS ENUM
. In order to create the
type using PostgreSQL, the name
parameter must be
specified to the constructor. The type also accepts a
native_enum=False
option which will issue the
VARCHAR/CHECK strategy for all databases. Note that
PostgreSQL ENUM types currently don’t work with pg8000 or
zxjdbc.
Reflection Returns Dialect-Specific Types¶
Reflection now returns the most specific type possible from
the database. That is, if you create a table using
String
, then reflect it back, the reflected column will
likely be VARCHAR
. For dialects that support a more
specific form of the type, that’s what you’ll get. So a
Text
type would come back as oracle.CLOB
on Oracle,
a LargeBinary
might be an mysql.MEDIUMBLOB
etc. The
obvious advantage here is that reflection preserves as much
information possible from what the database had to say.
Some applications that deal heavily in table metadata may
wish to compare types across reflected tables and/or non-
reflected tables. There’s a semi-private accessor available
on TypeEngine
called _type_affinity
and an
associated comparison helper _compare_type_affinity
.
This accessor returns the “generic” types
class which
the type corresponds to:
>>> String(50)._compare_type_affinity(postgresql.VARCHAR(50))
True
>>> Integer()._compare_type_affinity(mysql.REAL)
False
Miscellaneous API Changes¶
The usual “generic” types are still the general system in
use, i.e. String
, Float
, DateTime
. There’s a
few changes there:
Types no longer make any guesses as to default parameters. In particular,
Numeric
,Float
, as well as subclasses NUMERIC, FLOAT, DECIMAL don’t generate any length or scale unless specified. This also continues to include the controversialString
andVARCHAR
types (although MySQL dialect will pre-emptively raise when asked to render VARCHAR with no length). No defaults are assumed, and if they are used in a CREATE TABLE statement, an error will be raised if the underlying database does not allow non-lengthed versions of these types.the
Binary
type has been renamed toLargeBinary
, for BLOB/BYTEA/similar types. ForBINARY
andVARBINARY
, those are present directly astypes.BINARY
,types.VARBINARY
, as well as in the MySQL and MS-SQL dialects.PickleType
now uses == for comparison of values when mutable=True, unless the “comparator” argument with a comparison function is specified to the type. If you are pickling a custom object you should implement an__eq__()
method so that value-based comparisons are accurate.The default “precision” and “scale” arguments of Numeric and Float have been removed and now default to None. NUMERIC and FLOAT will be rendered with no numeric arguments by default unless these values are provided.
DATE, TIME and DATETIME types on SQLite can now take optional “storage_format” and “regexp” argument. “storage_format” can be used to store those types using a custom string format. “regexp” allows to use a custom regular expression to match string values from the database.
__legacy_microseconds__
on SQLiteTime
andDateTime
types is not supported anymore. You should use the new “storage_format” argument instead.DateTime
types on SQLite now use by a default a stricter regular expression to match strings from the database. Use the new “regexp” argument if you are using data stored in a legacy format.
ORM Changes¶
Upgrading an ORM application from 0.5 to 0.6 should require little to no changes, as the ORM’s behavior remains almost identical. There are some default argument and name changes, and some loading behaviors have been improved.
New Unit of Work¶
The internals for the unit of work, primarily
topological.py
and unitofwork.py
, have been
completely rewritten and are vastly simplified. This
should have no impact on usage, as all existing behavior
during flush has been maintained exactly (or at least, as
far as it is exercised by our testsuite and the handful of
production environments which have tested it heavily). The
performance of flush() now uses 20-30% fewer method calls
and should also use less memory. The intent and flow of the
source code should now be reasonably easy to follow, and the
architecture of the flush is fairly open-ended at this
point, creating room for potential new areas of
sophistication. The flush process no longer has any
reliance on recursion so flush plans of arbitrary size and
complexity can be flushed. Additionally, the mapper’s
“save” process, which issues INSERT and UPDATE statements,
now caches the “compiled” form of the two statements so that
callcounts are further dramatically reduced with very large
flushes.
Any changes in behavior observed with flush versus earlier versions of 0.6 or 0.5 should be reported to us ASAP - we’ll make sure no functionality is lost.
Changes to query.update()
and query.delete()
¶
the ‘expire’ option on query.update() has been renamed to ‘fetch’, thus matching that of query.delete()
query.update()
andquery.delete()
both default to ‘evaluate’ for the synchronize strategy.the ‘synchronize’ strategy for update() and delete() raises an error on failure. There is no implicit fallback onto “fetch”. Failure of evaluation is based on the structure of criteria, so success/failure is deterministic based on code structure.
relation()
is officially named relationship()
¶
This to solve the long running issue that “relation” means a
“table or derived table” in relational algebra terms. The
relation()
name, which is less typing, will hang around
for the foreseeable future so this change should be entirely
painless.
Subquery eager loading¶
A new kind of eager loading is added called “subquery”
loading. This is a load that emits a second SQL query
immediately after the first which loads full collections for
all the parents in the first query, joining upwards to the
parent using INNER JOIN. Subquery loading is used similarly
to the current joined-eager loading, using the
`subqueryload()``
and ``subqueryload_all()``
options
as well as the ``lazy='subquery'``
setting on
``relationship()`
. The subquery load is usually much
more efficient for loading many larger collections as it
uses INNER JOIN unconditionally and also doesn’t re-load
parent rows.
`eagerload()``
, ``eagerload_all()``
is now ``joinedload()``
, ``joinedload_all()`
¶
To make room for the new subquery load feature, the existing
`eagerload()``
/``eagerload_all()``
options are now
superseded by ``joinedload()``
and
``joinedload_all()``
. The old names will hang around
for the foreseeable future just like ``relation()`
.
`lazy=False|None|True|'dynamic'``
now accepts ``lazy='noload'|'joined'|'subquery'|'select'|'dynamic'`
¶
Continuing on the theme of loader strategies opened up, the
standard keywords for the `lazy``
option on
``relationship()``
are now ``select``
for lazy
loading (via a SELECT issued on attribute access),
``joined``
for joined-eager loading, ``subquery``
for subquery-eager loading, ``noload``
for no loading
should occur, and ``dynamic``
for a “dynamic”
relationship. The old ``True``
, ``False``
,
``None`
arguments are still accepted with the identical
behavior as before.
innerjoin=True on relation, joinedload¶
Joined-eagerly loaded scalars and collections can now be instructed to use INNER JOIN instead of OUTER JOIN. On PostgreSQL this is observed to provide a 300-600% speedup on some queries. Set this flag for any many-to-one which is on a NOT NULLable foreign key, and similarly for any collection where related items are guaranteed to exist.
At mapper level:
mapper(Child, child)
mapper(
Parent,
parent,
properties={"child": relationship(Child, lazy="joined", innerjoin=True)},
)
At query time level:
session.query(Parent).options(joinedload(Parent.child, innerjoin=True)).all()
The innerjoin=True
flag at the relationship()
level
will also take effect for any joinedload()
option which
does not override the value.
Many-to-one Enhancements¶
many-to-one relations now fire off a lazyload in fewer cases, including in most cases will not fetch the “old” value when a new one is replaced.
many-to-one relation to a joined-table subclass now uses get() for a simple load (known as the “use_get” condition), i.e.
Related
->``Sub(Base)``, without the need to redefine the primaryjoin condition in terms of the base table. [ticket:1186]specifying a foreign key with a declarative column, i.e.
ForeignKey(MyRelatedClass.id)
doesn’t break the “use_get” condition from taking place [ticket:1492]relationship(), joinedload(), and joinedload_all() now feature an option called “innerjoin”. Specify
True
orFalse
to control whether an eager join is constructed as an INNER or OUTER join. Default isFalse
as always. The mapper options will override whichever setting is specified on relationship(). Should generally be set for many-to-one, not nullable foreign key relations to allow improved join performance. [ticket:1544]the behavior of joined eager loading such that the main query is wrapped in a subquery when LIMIT/OFFSET are present now makes an exception for the case when all eager loads are many-to-one joins. In those cases, the eager joins are against the parent table directly along with the limit/offset without the extra overhead of a subquery, since a many-to-one join does not add rows to the result.
For example, in 0.5 this query:
session.query(Address).options(eagerload(Address.user)).limit(10)
would produce SQL like:
SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM addresses LIMIT 10) AS anon_1 LEFT OUTER JOIN users AS users_1 ON users_1.id = anon_1.addresses_user_id
This because the presence of any eager loaders suggests that some or all of them may relate to multi-row collections, which would necessitate wrapping any kind of rowcount-sensitive modifiers like LIMIT inside of a subquery.
In 0.6, that logic is more sensitive and can detect if all eager loaders represent many-to-ones, in which case the eager joins don’t affect the rowcount:
SELECT * FROM addresses LEFT OUTER JOIN users AS users_1 ON users_1.id = addresses.user_id LIMIT 10
Mutable Primary Keys with Joined Table Inheritance¶
A joined table inheritance config where the child table has
a PK that foreign keys to the parent PK can now be updated
on a CASCADE-capable database like PostgreSQL.
mapper()
now has an option passive_updates=True
which indicates this foreign key is updated automatically.
If on a non-cascading database like SQLite or MySQL/MyISAM,
set this flag to False
. A future feature enhancement
will try to get this flag to be auto-configuring based on
dialect/table style in use.
Beaker Caching¶
A promising new example of Beaker integration is in
examples/beaker_caching
. This is a straightforward
recipe which applies a Beaker cache within the result-
generation engine of Query
. Cache parameters are
provided via query.options()
, and allows full control
over the contents of the cache. SQLAlchemy 0.6 includes
improvements to the Session.merge()
method to support
this and similar recipes, as well as to provide
significantly improved performance in most scenarios.
Other Changes¶
the “row tuple” object returned by
Query
when multiple column/entities are selected is now picklable as well as higher performing.query.join()
has been reworked to provide more consistent behavior and more flexibility (includes [ticket:1537])query.select_from()
accepts multiple clauses to produce multiple comma separated entries within the FROM clause. Useful when selecting from multiple-homed join() clauses.the “dont_load=True” flag on
Session.merge()
is deprecated and is now “load=False”.added “make_transient()” helper function which transforms a persistent/ detached instance into a transient one (i.e. deletes the instance_key and removes from any session.) [ticket:1052]
the allow_null_pks flag on mapper() is deprecated and has been renamed to allow_partial_pks. It is turned “on” by default. This means that a row which has a non-null value for any of its primary key columns will be considered an identity. The need for this scenario typically only occurs when mapping to an outer join. When set to False, a PK that has NULLs in it will not be considered a primary key - in particular this means a result row will come back as None (or not be filled into a collection), and new in 0.6 also indicates that session.merge() won’t issue a round trip to the database for such a PK value. [ticket:1680]
the mechanics of “backref” have been fully merged into the finer grained “back_populates” system, and take place entirely within the
_generate_backref()
method ofRelationProperty
. This makes the initialization procedure ofRelationProperty
simpler and allows easier propagation of settings (such as from subclasses ofRelationProperty
) into the reverse reference. The internalBackRef()
is gone andbackref()
returns a plain tuple that is understood byRelationProperty
.the keys attribute of
ResultProxy
is now a method, so references to it (result.keys
) must be changed to method invocations (result.keys()
)ResultProxy.last_inserted_ids
is now deprecated, useResultProxy.inserted_primary_key
instead.
Deprecated/Removed ORM Elements¶
Most elements that were deprecated throughout 0.5 and raised deprecation warnings have been removed (with a few exceptions). All elements that were marked “pending deprecation” are now deprecated and will raise a warning upon use.
‘transactional’ flag on sessionmaker() and others is removed. Use ‘autocommit=True’ to indicate ‘transactional=False’.
‘polymorphic_fetch’ argument on mapper() is removed. Loading can be controlled using the ‘with_polymorphic’ option.
‘select_table’ argument on mapper() is removed. Use ‘with_polymorphic=(“*”, <some selectable>)’ for this functionality.
‘proxy’ argument on synonym() is removed. This flag did nothing throughout 0.5, as the “proxy generation” behavior is now automatic.
Passing a single list of elements to joinedload(), joinedload_all(), contains_eager(), lazyload(), defer(), and undefer() instead of multiple positional *args is deprecated.
Passing a single list of elements to query.order_by(), query.group_by(), query.join(), or query.outerjoin() instead of multiple positional *args is deprecated.
query.iterate_instances()
is removed. Usequery.instances()
.Query.query_from_parent()
is removed. Use the sqlalchemy.orm.with_parent() function to produce a “parent” clause, or alternativelyquery.with_parent()
.query._from_self()
is removed, usequery.from_self()
instead.the “comparator” argument to composite() is removed. Use “comparator_factory”.
RelationProperty._get_join()
is removed.the ‘echo_uow’ flag on Session is removed. Use logging on the “sqlalchemy.orm.unitofwork” name.
session.clear()
is removed. usesession.expunge_all()
.session.save()
,session.update()
,session.save_or_update()
are removed. Usesession.add()
andsession.add_all()
.the “objects” flag on session.flush() remains deprecated.
the “dont_load=True” flag on session.merge() is deprecated in favor of “load=False”.
ScopedSession.mapper
remains deprecated. See the usage recipe at https://www.sqlalchemy.org/trac/wiki/Usag eRecipes/SessionAwareMapperpassing an
InstanceState
(internal SQLAlchemy state object) toattributes.init_collection()
orattributes.get_history()
is deprecated. These functions are public API and normally expect a regular mapped object instance.the ‘engine’ parameter to
declarative_base()
is removed. Use the ‘bind’ keyword argument.
Extensions¶
SQLSoup¶
SQLSoup has been modernized and updated to reflect common 0.5/0.6 capabilities, including well defined session integration. Please read the new docs at [https://www.sqlalc hemy.org/docs/06/reference/ext/sqlsoup.html].
Declarative¶
The DeclarativeMeta
(default metaclass for
declarative_base
) previously allowed subclasses to
modify dict_
to add class attributes (e.g. columns).
This no longer works, the DeclarativeMeta
constructor
now ignores dict_
. Instead, the class attributes should
be assigned directly, e.g. cls.id=Column(...)
, or the
MixIn class approach should be used
instead of the metaclass approach.
flambé! the dragon and The Alchemist image designs created and generously donated by Rotem Yaari.
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