Re: [sqlalchemy] why MySQL DOUBLE is asdecimal=True by default

[Mike Bayer]

still looks like DOUBLE should be dealing with Python floats.
DOUBLE_PRECISION in the Oracle dialect is also Float and doesn't
default to decimal coercion.

We can fix this problem, it's just one of those changes that you have
to warn users like crazy on and then just do the change on a major
release.

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 2:53 PM Jonathan Vanasco  wrote:
>
> FWIW, that PR would have been during MySQL5.0 - not 5.5.
>
> 5.0 was released in October 2005; 5.1 was not released until November 2008
>
> assuming the 5.0 docs...
>>
>> https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19078-01/mysql/mysql-refman-5.0/data-types.html#numeric-types
>
>
> looking deeper at their docs, this bit may have influenced someone:
>
> 
>
> 10.7. Choosing the Right Type for a Column
>
> For optimum storage, you should try to use the most precise type in all 
> cases. For example, if an integer column is used for values in the range from 
> 1 to 9, MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED is the best type. Of the types that represent 
> all the required values, this type uses the least amount of storage.
>
> Tables created in MySQL 5.0.3 and above use a new storage format for DECIMAL 
> columns. All basic calculations (+, -, *, and /) with DECIMAL columns are 
> done with precision of 65 decimal (base 10) digits. See Section 10.1.1, 
> “Overview of Numeric Types”.
>
> Prior to MySQL 5.0.3, calculations on DECIMAL values are performed using 
> double-precision operations. If accuracy is not too important or if speed is 
> the highest priority, the DOUBLE type may be good enough. For high precision, 
> you can always convert to a fixed-point type stored in a BIGINT. This enables 
> you to do all calculations with 64-bit integers and then convert results back 
> to floating-point values as necessary.
>
>
>
> all that being said, updating mysql was a chore and often scary then, so most 
> linux distributions and dbas held things back and did not upgrade as 
> aggressively as people have the past 5 years. 3.23/4.1 was likely a core 
> target for SqlAlachemy - not 5.x
>
>
> http://ftp.nchu.edu.tw/MySQL/doc/refman/4.1/en/choosing-types.html
>
> http://ftp.nchu.edu.tw/MySQL/doc/refman/4.1/en/numeric-types.html
>
>
>
> --
> SQLAlchemy -
> The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper
>
> http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
>
> To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and 
> Verifiable Example. See http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full 
> description.
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "sqlalchemy" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[sqlalchemy] Re: Order By Relationship Set Order Type Desc

[mkwyche]

Looks like you can add `.desc()` after the column name :-D 

On Monday, April 29, 2019 at 3:40:24 PM UTC-4, mkwyche wrote:
>
> Looking through the docs and I see there's an `order_by` attribute on 
> relationships(
> https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/orm/relationship_api.html#sqlalchemy.orm.relationship).
>  
> How would I order by desc instead of asc?
>

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[sqlalchemy] Order By Relationship Set Order Type Desc

[mkwyche]

Looking through the docs and I see there's an `order_by` attribute on 
relationships(
https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/orm/relationship_api.html#sqlalchemy.orm.relationship).
 
How would I order by desc instead of asc?

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: [sqlalchemy] why MySQL DOUBLE is asdecimal=True by default

[Jonathan Vanasco]

FWIW, that PR would have been during MySQL5.0 - not 5.5. 

5.0 was released in October 2005; 5.1 was not released until November 2008

assuming the 5.0 docs...

>
> https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19078-01/mysql/mysql-refman-5.0/data-types.html#numeric-types


looking deeper at their docs, this bit may have influenced someone:



10.7. Choosing the Right Type for a Column

For optimum storage, you should try to use the most precise type in all 
cases. For example, if an integer column is used for values in the range 
from 1 to 9, MEDIUMINT UNSIGNED is the best type. Of the types that 
represent all the required values, this type uses the least amount of 
storage.

Tables created in MySQL 5.0.3 and above use a new storage format for DECIMAL 

 columns. 
All basic calculations (+, -, *, and /) with DECIMAL 

 columns 
are done with precision of 65 decimal (base 10) digits. See Section 10.1.1, 
“Overview of Numeric Types” 

.

Prior to MySQL 5.0.3, calculations on DECIMAL 

 values 
are performed using double-precision operations. If accuracy is not too 
important or if speed is the highest priority, the DOUBLE 

 type 
may be good enough. For high precision, you can always convert to a 
fixed-point type stored in a BIGINT 
.
 
This enables you to do all calculations with 64-bit integers and then 
convert results back to floating-point values as necessary.



all that being said, updating mysql was a chore and often scary then, so 
most linux distributions and dbas held things back and did not upgrade as 
aggressively as people have the past 5 years. 3.23/4.1 was likely a core 
target for SqlAlachemy - not 5.x


http://ftp.nchu.edu.tw/MySQL/doc/refman/4.1/en/choosing-types.html

http://ftp.nchu.edu.tw/MySQL/doc/refman/4.1/en/numeric-types.html



-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: [sqlalchemy] why MySQL DOUBLE is asdecimal=True by default

[Michał Dobrzański]

Interesting. Thank you for the extensive explanation.

pon., 29 kwi 2019 o 19:49 Mike Bayer  napisał(a):

> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:13 PM mdob  wrote:
> >
> > Just out of curiosity, why it was decided that MySQL DOUBLE, which is
> approximation, will be presented in ORM as Decimal by default instead of
> float?
> >
> > MySQL DOUBLE -
> https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/floating-point-types.html
> > SQLAlchemy DOUBLE -
> https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/dialects/mysql.html#sqlalchemy.dialects.mysql.DOUBLE
>
> no idea, lets do a git blame
>
> it looks like the issue to first add Decimal support was:
>
> https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/issues/646
>
> it appears to refer to a no longer tracked SVN changeset, the merge
> can be seen at
> https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/commit/ed4fc64bb0ac61c27bc4af32962fb129e74a36bf
> ,
> where quite arbitrarily the asdecimal flag is True for DOUBLE even
> though the superclass is Float.  That's all 12 years ago.
>
> Let's try to blame for the ".. note" that was added, since someone
> seems to have noticed this was wrong about six years ago, seems like
> it was in
> https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/commit/6b79d2ea7951abc2bb6083b541db0fbf71590dd3
> where we made it a lot more explicit how the float coercion occurs.
>
> All we have is a guess.   It would have been that I either observed or
> guessed that Python's float, at least the "ten digits" that was coming
> out by default back on my cPython 2.3 interpreter on my PowerPC mac at
> the time, was not accurate enough to represent the values coming back
> from a double-precision floating point value.
> Trying to see what the likely floating point representation is for
> cPython is ...a ha we can do this:
>
> >>> import sys
> >>> sys.float_info
> sys.float_info(max=1.7976931348623157e+308, max_exp=1024,
> max_10_exp=308, min=2.2250738585072014e-308, min_exp=-1021,
> min_10_exp=-307, dig=15, mant_dig=53, epsilon=2.220446049250313e-16,
> radix=2, rounds=1)
>
> I have no idea what would have been happening at that time, it was
> likely to preserve round trips for the additional digits, but this was
> shortsighted because the driver at the time MySQLdb was likely
> returning floats anyway, current branch of it does:
>
> https://github.com/PyMySQL/mysqlclient-python/blob/master/MySQLdb/converters.py#L107
> so seems like a careless oversight.  Sorry!
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Michal
> >
> > --
> > SQLAlchemy -
> > The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper
> >
> > http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
> >
> > To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and
> Verifiable Example. See http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full
> description.
> > ---
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "sqlalchemy" group.
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
> an email to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> > To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
> > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
> --
> SQLAlchemy -
> The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper
>
> http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
>
> To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and
> Verifiable Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full
> description.
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "sqlalchemy" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: [sqlalchemy] Possible regression?

[Lyla Fischer]

Awesome! Thanks!

-Lyla

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:55 PM Mike Bayer  wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:37 PM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
> >
> > Ah. I think that I have been thinking of a session as a cache instead of
> a transaction, which is incorrect. (It's similar because you have to worry
> about persistence in the face of failures, but not-similar, because you're
> not worried about communication with other processes. That is, a commit is
> not "expose this data to other cores/machines". A commit is a checkpoint to
> rollback to.) I was thinking that adding something to the session was
> taking something from a local and putting it into a cache, and then
> committing it was taking it from a cache and putting it into the database.
> Totally wrong abstraction, sorry.
>
> OK, this is more thinking than I usually do about this on a daily
> basis and I don't think much about it anymore, but you might want to
> watch my video at
> https://www.sqlalchemy.org/library.html#thesqlalchemysessionindepth
> where I went through an amount of effort I would never have time for
> these days in order to show what the general idea of it is.   Also
> note the Session concept is mostly from Hibernate, including the API
> for merge() as well as cascades which I largely copied without deeply
> considering it beyond the heavy thinking they did up front; the pycon
> talk I did after several years of learning how the Session was
> actually supposed to work which itself required that I redesigned half
> the thing in version 0.5.
>
>
> >
> > -Lyla
> >
> > On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:04 PM Mike Bayer 
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 12:04 PM Lyla Fischer 
> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Sorry about the language. I'll try to stick to "intuitive" and
> "surprising" in the future.
> >> >
> >> > I guess that I am familiar enough with the concept that something
> needs to persist in the database before it can be referenced in the
> database that I was surprised when an object was already in the database
> even when I didn't tell it to persist.
> >> >
> >> > This is especially true in the case of a one-to-many relationship,
> where the head of a tassel can exist without any tassel threads. It just
> happened to be the case that I added a tassel thread and... now it is in
> the session?? Quoting from a previous email, for easy reference:
> >> > """
> >> > my_head = Head(id="foobar")
> >> > my_head = db_session.merge(my_head)
> >> > db_session.commit()
> >> >
> >> > my_tassel_thread = TasselThread(head=my_head)
> >> >
> >> > "my_tassel_thread" is now in the Session due to the backref cascade,
> >> > which I think I really might consider defaulting to False at some
> >> > point.
> >> > """
> >> >
> >> > What would happen if I were editing an existing TasselThread, instead
> of adding a new one? Would those changes be persisted as well, even though
> I didn't tell them to explicitly?
> >>
> >> so the idea of "an existing TasselThread" in terms of the ORM means
> >> you would have accessed it from the database, which means it would
> >> have a primary key value and already be associated with that Session.
> >>   So you would expect that changes on this object are persisted.   If
> >> you expunged the object so that it became detached, then yes again the
> >> cascade_backrefs thing gets in the way (or not, depending on how you
> >> look at it) if you re-associate it with a persistent object.
> >>
> >> >
> >> > I get that you are doing stuff in the backend that involves database
> persistence in order to make the collection references work, but if it were
> implemented using only foreign keys, then the head would have no way of
> accessing it's tassel threads short of doing a table scan for it's own
> primary key in the foreign key spot. I get that's massively inefficient,
> and therefore not the way that you are doing things,
> >>
> >> if you don't use the backref feature at all, then it actually does
> >> work that way.you can wait for flushes to happen, then expire
> >> attributes on things once they are persistent. this way of working
> >> will expose the persistence mechanics a lot more explicitly and
> >> inconveniently though.
> >>
> >> > but I was thinking of SQL Alchemy relationship as being something
> that very well could have been implemented without creating new things to
> persist in the database beyond what is in the bare minimum of common
> explanations of SQL-level one-to-many relationships, often used in intro
> classes.
> >>
> >> what are the "new things to persist" you are referring towards ?
> >> Are you referring to the fact that in order to set
> >> TasselThread.some_foreign_key to a value, you need a Tassel object?
> >> That is also optional.  You can set foreign key values directly as
> >> well, and there is no issue with that, except that it does not
> >> automatically refresh the related relationships; you'd need to expire
> >> them directly or wait until everything is expired on commit.  The 

Re: [sqlalchemy] Possible regression?

[Mike Bayer]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:37 PM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
>
> Ah. I think that I have been thinking of a session as a cache instead of a 
> transaction, which is incorrect. (It's similar because you have to worry 
> about persistence in the face of failures, but not-similar, because you're 
> not worried about communication with other processes. That is, a commit is 
> not "expose this data to other cores/machines". A commit is a checkpoint to 
> rollback to.) I was thinking that adding something to the session was taking 
> something from a local and putting it into a cache, and then committing it 
> was taking it from a cache and putting it into the database. Totally wrong 
> abstraction, sorry.

OK, this is more thinking than I usually do about this on a daily
basis and I don't think much about it anymore, but you might want to
watch my video at
https://www.sqlalchemy.org/library.html#thesqlalchemysessionindepth
where I went through an amount of effort I would never have time for
these days in order to show what the general idea of it is.   Also
note the Session concept is mostly from Hibernate, including the API
for merge() as well as cascades which I largely copied without deeply
considering it beyond the heavy thinking they did up front; the pycon
talk I did after several years of learning how the Session was
actually supposed to work which itself required that I redesigned half
the thing in version 0.5.


>
> -Lyla
>
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:04 PM Mike Bayer  wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 12:04 PM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
>> >
>> > Sorry about the language. I'll try to stick to "intuitive" and 
>> > "surprising" in the future.
>> >
>> > I guess that I am familiar enough with the concept that something needs to 
>> > persist in the database before it can be referenced in the database that I 
>> > was surprised when an object was already in the database even when I 
>> > didn't tell it to persist.
>> >
>> > This is especially true in the case of a one-to-many relationship, where 
>> > the head of a tassel can exist without any tassel threads. It just 
>> > happened to be the case that I added a tassel thread and... now it is in 
>> > the session?? Quoting from a previous email, for easy reference:
>> > """
>> > my_head = Head(id="foobar")
>> > my_head = db_session.merge(my_head)
>> > db_session.commit()
>> >
>> > my_tassel_thread = TasselThread(head=my_head)
>> >
>> > "my_tassel_thread" is now in the Session due to the backref cascade,
>> > which I think I really might consider defaulting to False at some
>> > point.
>> > """
>> >
>> > What would happen if I were editing an existing TasselThread, instead of 
>> > adding a new one? Would those changes be persisted as well, even though I 
>> > didn't tell them to explicitly?
>>
>> so the idea of "an existing TasselThread" in terms of the ORM means
>> you would have accessed it from the database, which means it would
>> have a primary key value and already be associated with that Session.
>>   So you would expect that changes on this object are persisted.   If
>> you expunged the object so that it became detached, then yes again the
>> cascade_backrefs thing gets in the way (or not, depending on how you
>> look at it) if you re-associate it with a persistent object.
>>
>> >
>> > I get that you are doing stuff in the backend that involves database 
>> > persistence in order to make the collection references work, but if it 
>> > were implemented using only foreign keys, then the head would have no way 
>> > of accessing it's tassel threads short of doing a table scan for it's own 
>> > primary key in the foreign key spot. I get that's massively inefficient, 
>> > and therefore not the way that you are doing things,
>>
>> if you don't use the backref feature at all, then it actually does
>> work that way.you can wait for flushes to happen, then expire
>> attributes on things once they are persistent. this way of working
>> will expose the persistence mechanics a lot more explicitly and
>> inconveniently though.
>>
>> > but I was thinking of SQL Alchemy relationship as being something that 
>> > very well could have been implemented without creating new things to 
>> > persist in the database beyond what is in the bare minimum of common 
>> > explanations of SQL-level one-to-many relationships, often used in intro 
>> > classes.
>>
>> what are the "new things to persist" you are referring towards ?
>> Are you referring to the fact that in order to set
>> TasselThread.some_foreign_key to a value, you need a Tassel object?
>> That is also optional.  You can set foreign key values directly as
>> well, and there is no issue with that, except that it does not
>> automatically refresh the related relationships; you'd need to expire
>> them directly or wait until everything is expired on commit.  The FAQ
>> entry 
>> 

Re: [sqlalchemy] why MySQL DOUBLE is asdecimal=True by default

[Mike Bayer]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:13 PM mdob  wrote:
>
> Just out of curiosity, why it was decided that MySQL DOUBLE, which is 
> approximation, will be presented in ORM as Decimal by default instead of 
> float?
>
> MySQL DOUBLE - 
> https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/floating-point-types.html
> SQLAlchemy DOUBLE - 
> https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/dialects/mysql.html#sqlalchemy.dialects.mysql.DOUBLE

no idea, lets do a git blame

it looks like the issue to first add Decimal support was:

https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/issues/646

it appears to refer to a no longer tracked SVN changeset, the merge
can be seen at 
https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/commit/ed4fc64bb0ac61c27bc4af32962fb129e74a36bf,
where quite arbitrarily the asdecimal flag is True for DOUBLE even
though the superclass is Float.  That's all 12 years ago.

Let's try to blame for the ".. note" that was added, since someone
seems to have noticed this was wrong about six years ago, seems like
it was in 
https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/commit/6b79d2ea7951abc2bb6083b541db0fbf71590dd3
where we made it a lot more explicit how the float coercion occurs.

All we have is a guess.   It would have been that I either observed or
guessed that Python's float, at least the "ten digits" that was coming
out by default back on my cPython 2.3 interpreter on my PowerPC mac at
the time, was not accurate enough to represent the values coming back
from a double-precision floating point value.
Trying to see what the likely floating point representation is for
cPython is ...a ha we can do this:

>>> import sys
>>> sys.float_info
sys.float_info(max=1.7976931348623157e+308, max_exp=1024,
max_10_exp=308, min=2.2250738585072014e-308, min_exp=-1021,
min_10_exp=-307, dig=15, mant_dig=53, epsilon=2.220446049250313e-16,
radix=2, rounds=1)

I have no idea what would have been happening at that time, it was
likely to preserve round trips for the additional digits, but this was
shortsighted because the driver at the time MySQLdb was likely
returning floats anyway, current branch of it does:
https://github.com/PyMySQL/mysqlclient-python/blob/master/MySQLdb/converters.py#L107
so seems like a careless oversight.  Sorry!





>
> Thanks,
> Michal
>
> --
> SQLAlchemy -
> The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper
>
> http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
>
> To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and 
> Verifiable Example. See http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full 
> description.
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
> "sqlalchemy" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an 
> email to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: [sqlalchemy] Possible regression?

[Lyla Fischer]

Ah. I think that I have been thinking of a session as a cache instead of a
transaction, which is incorrect. (It's similar because you have to worry
about persistence in the face of failures, but not-similar, because you're
not worried about communication with other processes. That is, a commit is
not "expose this data to other cores/machines". A commit is a checkpoint to
rollback to.) I was thinking that adding something to the session was
taking something from a local and putting it into a cache, and then
committing it was taking it from a cache and putting it into the database.
Totally wrong abstraction, sorry.

-Lyla

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 1:04 PM Mike Bayer  wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 12:04 PM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
> >
> > Sorry about the language. I'll try to stick to "intuitive" and
> "surprising" in the future.
> >
> > I guess that I am familiar enough with the concept that something needs
> to persist in the database before it can be referenced in the database that
> I was surprised when an object was already in the database even when I
> didn't tell it to persist.
> >
> > This is especially true in the case of a one-to-many relationship, where
> the head of a tassel can exist without any tassel threads. It just happened
> to be the case that I added a tassel thread and... now it is in the
> session?? Quoting from a previous email, for easy reference:
> > """
> > my_head = Head(id="foobar")
> > my_head = db_session.merge(my_head)
> > db_session.commit()
> >
> > my_tassel_thread = TasselThread(head=my_head)
> >
> > "my_tassel_thread" is now in the Session due to the backref cascade,
> > which I think I really might consider defaulting to False at some
> > point.
> > """
> >
> > What would happen if I were editing an existing TasselThread, instead of
> adding a new one? Would those changes be persisted as well, even though I
> didn't tell them to explicitly?
>
> so the idea of "an existing TasselThread" in terms of the ORM means
> you would have accessed it from the database, which means it would
> have a primary key value and already be associated with that Session.
>   So you would expect that changes on this object are persisted.   If
> you expunged the object so that it became detached, then yes again the
> cascade_backrefs thing gets in the way (or not, depending on how you
> look at it) if you re-associate it with a persistent object.
>
> >
> > I get that you are doing stuff in the backend that involves database
> persistence in order to make the collection references work, but if it were
> implemented using only foreign keys, then the head would have no way of
> accessing it's tassel threads short of doing a table scan for it's own
> primary key in the foreign key spot. I get that's massively inefficient,
> and therefore not the way that you are doing things,
>
> if you don't use the backref feature at all, then it actually does
> work that way.you can wait for flushes to happen, then expire
> attributes on things once they are persistent. this way of working
> will expose the persistence mechanics a lot more explicitly and
> inconveniently though.
>
> > but I was thinking of SQL Alchemy relationship as being something that
> very well could have been implemented without creating new things to
> persist in the database beyond what is in the bare minimum of common
> explanations of SQL-level one-to-many relationships, often used in intro
> classes.
>
> what are the "new things to persist" you are referring towards ?
> Are you referring to the fact that in order to set
> TasselThread.some_foreign_key to a value, you need a Tassel object?
> That is also optional.  You can set foreign key values directly as
> well, and there is no issue with that, except that it does not
> automatically refresh the related relationships; you'd need to expire
> them directly or wait until everything is expired on commit.  The FAQ
> entry
> https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/faq/sessions.html#i-set-the-foo-id-attribute-on-my-instance-to-7-but-the-foo-attribute-is-still-none-shouldn-t-it-have-loaded-foo-with-id-7
> discusses this in detail.
>
> There is also a related recipe
> https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/wiki/ExpireRelationshipOnFKChange
> (the FAQ has an apparently broken link to it) which expands upon the
> "set foreign key attributes" way of working so that the related
> objects *are* automatically refreshed immediately.There is at
> least one major production-level application that uses this recipe,
> which is why it's so complicated because I helped them find every
> possible edge case, however I don't recommend using this recipe
> because it is complicated and works in opposition to the design of the
> ORM.However, a lot of folks find it appealing because they are in
> fact coming from the "SQL-level" view of things to which you refer and
> prefer to stay at that level, yet they still want their relationships
> to load automatically.
>
>
> > Then the 

[sqlalchemy] why MySQL DOUBLE is asdecimal=True by default

[mdob]

Just out of curiosity, why it was decided that MySQL DOUBLE, which is 
approximation, will be presented in ORM as Decimal by default instead of 
float?

MySQL DOUBLE - 
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/floating-point-types.html
SQLAlchemy DOUBLE - 
https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/dialects/mysql.html#sqlalchemy.dialects.mysql.DOUBLE

Thanks, 
Michal

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Re: [sqlalchemy] Possible regression?

[Mike Bayer]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 12:04 PM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
>
> Sorry about the language. I'll try to stick to "intuitive" and "surprising" 
> in the future.
>
> I guess that I am familiar enough with the concept that something needs to 
> persist in the database before it can be referenced in the database that I 
> was surprised when an object was already in the database even when I didn't 
> tell it to persist.
>
> This is especially true in the case of a one-to-many relationship, where the 
> head of a tassel can exist without any tassel threads. It just happened to be 
> the case that I added a tassel thread and... now it is in the session?? 
> Quoting from a previous email, for easy reference:
> """
> my_head = Head(id="foobar")
> my_head = db_session.merge(my_head)
> db_session.commit()
>
> my_tassel_thread = TasselThread(head=my_head)
>
> "my_tassel_thread" is now in the Session due to the backref cascade,
> which I think I really might consider defaulting to False at some
> point.
> """
>
> What would happen if I were editing an existing TasselThread, instead of 
> adding a new one? Would those changes be persisted as well, even though I 
> didn't tell them to explicitly?

so the idea of "an existing TasselThread" in terms of the ORM means
you would have accessed it from the database, which means it would
have a primary key value and already be associated with that Session.
  So you would expect that changes on this object are persisted.   If
you expunged the object so that it became detached, then yes again the
cascade_backrefs thing gets in the way (or not, depending on how you
look at it) if you re-associate it with a persistent object.

>
> I get that you are doing stuff in the backend that involves database 
> persistence in order to make the collection references work, but if it were 
> implemented using only foreign keys, then the head would have no way of 
> accessing it's tassel threads short of doing a table scan for it's own 
> primary key in the foreign key spot. I get that's massively inefficient, and 
> therefore not the way that you are doing things,

if you don't use the backref feature at all, then it actually does
work that way.you can wait for flushes to happen, then expire
attributes on things once they are persistent. this way of working
will expose the persistence mechanics a lot more explicitly and
inconveniently though.

> but I was thinking of SQL Alchemy relationship as being something that very 
> well could have been implemented without creating new things to persist in 
> the database beyond what is in the bare minimum of common explanations of 
> SQL-level one-to-many relationships, often used in intro classes.

what are the "new things to persist" you are referring towards ?
Are you referring to the fact that in order to set
TasselThread.some_foreign_key to a value, you need a Tassel object?
That is also optional.  You can set foreign key values directly as
well, and there is no issue with that, except that it does not
automatically refresh the related relationships; you'd need to expire
them directly or wait until everything is expired on commit.  The FAQ
entry 
https://docs.sqlalchemy.org/en/13/faq/sessions.html#i-set-the-foo-id-attribute-on-my-instance-to-7-but-the-foo-attribute-is-still-none-shouldn-t-it-have-loaded-foo-with-id-7
discusses this in detail.

There is also a related recipe
https://github.com/sqlalchemy/sqlalchemy/wiki/ExpireRelationshipOnFKChange
(the FAQ has an apparently broken link to it) which expands upon the
"set foreign key attributes" way of working so that the related
objects *are* automatically refreshed immediately.There is at
least one major production-level application that uses this recipe,
which is why it's so complicated because I helped them find every
possible edge case, however I don't recommend using this recipe
because it is complicated and works in opposition to the design of the
ORM.However, a lot of folks find it appealing because they are in
fact coming from the "SQL-level" view of things to which you refer and
prefer to stay at that level, yet they still want their relationships
to load automatically.


> Then the relationship just means that I don't have to do a table scan - the 
> object just knows which TasselThreads are its own. That doesn't fit the 
> common university model of the way foreign key only one-to-many relationships 
> work, but I didn't think about it too hard. I was just thinking that "yes, of 
> course you need to persist the head before persisting a tassel thread, 
> because the tassel thread needs the id for its foreign key", while the 
> reverse didn't occur to me.
>
> -Lyla
>
> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 11:14 AM Mike Bayer  wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 7:22 AM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
>> >
>> > If I can comment on what seems instinctive to someone who just recently 
>> > read the documentation, and made assumptions based off of it: My 
>> > understanding was that the 

Re: [sqlalchemy] Possible regression?

[Lyla Fischer]

Sorry about the language. I'll try to stick to "intuitive" and "surprising"
in the future.

I guess that I am familiar enough with the concept that something needs to
persist in the database before it can be referenced in the database that I
was surprised when an object was already in the database even when I didn't
tell it to persist.

This is especially true in the case of a one-to-many relationship, where
the head of a tassel can exist without any tassel threads. It just happened
to be the case that I added a tassel thread and... now it is in the
session?? Quoting from a previous email, for easy reference:
"""
my_head = Head(id="foobar")
my_head = db_session.merge(my_head)
db_session.commit()

my_tassel_thread = TasselThread(head=my_head)

"my_tassel_thread" is now in the Session due to the backref cascade,
which I think I really might consider defaulting to False at some
point.
"""

What would happen if I were editing an existing TasselThread, instead of
adding a new one? Would those changes be persisted as well, even though I
didn't tell them to explicitly?

I get that you are doing stuff in the backend that involves database
persistence in order to make the collection references work, but if it were
implemented using only foreign keys, then the head would have no way of
accessing it's tassel threads short of doing a table scan for it's own
primary key in the foreign key spot. I get that's massively inefficient,
and therefore not the way that you are doing things, but I was thinking of
SQL Alchemy relationship as being something that very well could have been
implemented without creating new things to persist in the database beyond
what is in the bare minimum of common explanations

of SQL-level one-to-many relationships, often used in intro classes. Then
the relationship just means that I don't have to do a table scan - the
object just knows which TasselThreads are its own. That doesn't fit the
common university model of the way foreign key only one-to-many
relationships work, but I didn't think about it too hard. I was just
thinking that "yes, of course you need to persist the head before
persisting a tassel thread, because the tassel thread needs the id for its
foreign key", while the reverse didn't occur to me.

-Lyla

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 11:14 AM Mike Bayer 
wrote:

> On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 7:22 AM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
> >
> > If I can comment on what seems instinctive to someone who just recently
> read the documentation, and made assumptions based off of it: My
> understanding was that the relationship abstractions were supposed to be
> about making foreign keys easier to keep track of, and being able to go
> both ways on a relationship in a object-oriented way. The fact that there
> were any implications at all for persistence was surprising to me, and it
> took me a significant amount of time to understand that SQL Alchemy was
> trying to do some magic behind the scenes when it came to persistence. I
> support the idea of making cascade_backrefs=False by default, because it
> keeps the separate objects separate, it makes me less nervous about
> eventual performance (which is a constant concern when there is magic I
> didn't intend happening in a library), and it's basically just working the
> way that I expected things to work initially. I'm fine with dealing with
> errors that might come about from the implications of updating of objects
> independently. It seems like part of the responsibilities of dealing with
> persistence, ever.
>
> I'm trying to gather the rationale that you are referring towards in
> your comment, however I'm not able to work with the reason "magic I
> didn't intend", because that reason doesn't actually say anything.
> Of course every issue is about telling a library what your intent is,
> and the library fulfullling that intent or not.But to refer to the
> intents that you didn't expect as "magic" and the intents that you
> *did* expect as "not magic", I guess the latter is implicit, only
> illustrates how much the library is doing completely correctly such
> that you aren't noticing it.
>
> The thing that relationship() does is coordinating Python objects that
> are linked together in terms of a foreign key relationship in a
> database.Then there is the backref concept, which expands on the
> relationship concept, to more fully emulate the behavior of relational
> database foreign keys with Python objects.   When working completely
> normally, SQLAlchemy produces Python object behavior as follows:
>
> object_a = ObjectA()
> object_b = ObjectB()
> object_a.some_collection.append(object_b)
> assert object_b.parent is object_a
>
> Someone working only with Python objects would probably call most of
> the above interaction as "magic", that ObjectA has a collection
> automatically instantiated on that (this incidentally is also 

Re: [sqlalchemy] Possible regression?

[Mike Bayer]

On Mon, Apr 29, 2019 at 7:22 AM Lyla Fischer  wrote:
>
> If I can comment on what seems instinctive to someone who just recently read 
> the documentation, and made assumptions based off of it: My understanding was 
> that the relationship abstractions were supposed to be about making foreign 
> keys easier to keep track of, and being able to go both ways on a 
> relationship in a object-oriented way. The fact that there were any 
> implications at all for persistence was surprising to me, and it took me a 
> significant amount of time to understand that SQL Alchemy was trying to do 
> some magic behind the scenes when it came to persistence. I support the idea 
> of making cascade_backrefs=False by default, because it keeps the separate 
> objects separate, it makes me less nervous about eventual performance (which 
> is a constant concern when there is magic I didn't intend happening in a 
> library), and it's basically just working the way that I expected things to 
> work initially. I'm fine with dealing with errors that might come about from 
> the implications of updating of objects independently. It seems like part of 
> the responsibilities of dealing with persistence, ever.

I'm trying to gather the rationale that you are referring towards in
your comment, however I'm not able to work with the reason "magic I
didn't intend", because that reason doesn't actually say anything.
Of course every issue is about telling a library what your intent is,
and the library fulfullling that intent or not.But to refer to the
intents that you didn't expect as "magic" and the intents that you
*did* expect as "not magic", I guess the latter is implicit, only
illustrates how much the library is doing completely correctly such
that you aren't noticing it.

The thing that relationship() does is coordinating Python objects that
are linked together in terms of a foreign key relationship in a
database.Then there is the backref concept, which expands on the
relationship concept, to more fully emulate the behavior of relational
database foreign keys with Python objects.   When working completely
normally, SQLAlchemy produces Python object behavior as follows:

object_a = ObjectA()
object_b = ObjectB()
object_a.some_collection.append(object_b)
assert object_b.parent is object_a

Someone working only with Python objects would probably call most of
the above interaction as "magic", that ObjectA has a collection
automatically instantiated on that (this incidentally is also going to
be scaled back in SQLAlchemy 2.0) and that when I append an object to
this collection, the object now has a ".parent" that refers back to
that original object.The reason it has to do that in SQLAlchemy is
because we are emulating a relational database foreign key
relationship, where containment on one side implies association in the
other direction.

Where SQLAlchemy works hard to acknowledge that the above behaviors
are not normal for Python (that is, are reasonably perceived as
"magic"), is that the user explicitly configures attributes named
"some_collection" and "parent" on their classes, an they even have to
point them together at each other, and that the foreign key and
primary key columns that are involved in the persistence for the above
are also explicitly configured.   This is to reduce the amount of
assumptions and implicit decisions SQLAlchemy has to make thereby
reducing the possibility of surprise.

Now to the issue of casade_backrefs.   This flag is in a tough spot,
because either way, it leads to a situation that can be non-intutive
(that is, surprising).   Let's assume above we've turned it off, and
we do this:

object_a = ObjectA()
object_b = ObjectB()
session.add(object_b)
object_a.some_collection.append(object_b)
assert object_b.parent is object_a

What happens above when we persist object_b by calling
session.commit()?In fact the operation will fail, either silently
if the foreign key column is nullable, or explicitly if the column is
not nullable, because object_a will *not* be persisted and the foreign
key constraint on object_b cannot be satisfied.

The reason we get into this issue in the first place is that
SQLAlchemy also has an explicit concept of a Session, e.g. a database
transaction, where objects must be explicitly associated with that
transaction, and that this Session uses a unit of work pattern, which
is exactly the thing here that reduces the exposure to "persistence
implications" that you refer towards.   If we were working like other
ORMs, we'd just say "object_b.save()", where it likely would raise a
constraint error because we didn't call "object_a.save()" first, which
in SQLAlchemy's view is a significant persistence detail that is
needlessly exposed.  SQLAlchemy's very first version in fact
didn't have a Session, and all of object_a/ object_b would be
automatically associated with an implicit database connection, very
much the way active record 

Re: [sqlalchemy] Possible regression?

[Lyla Fischer]

If I can comment on what seems instinctive to someone who just recently
read the documentation, and made assumptions based off of it: My
understanding was that the relationship abstractions were supposed to be
about making foreign keys easier to keep track of, and being able to go
both ways on a relationship in a object-oriented way. The fact that there
were any implications at all for persistence was surprising to me, and it
took me a significant amount of time to understand that SQL Alchemy was
trying to do some magic behind the scenes when it came to persistence. I
support the idea of making cascade_backrefs=False by default, because it
keeps the separate objects separate, it makes me less nervous about
eventual performance (which is a constant concern when there is magic I
didn't intend happening in a library), and it's basically just working the
way that I expected things to work initially. I'm fine with dealing with
errors that might come about from the implications of updating of objects
independently. It seems like part of the responsibilities of dealing with
persistence, ever.



-Lyla

On Sun, Apr 28, 2019 at 10:54 PM James Fennell 
wrote:

> Thanks for the explanation Mike! Seeing it now, I actually think there’s a
> decent reason to want the current backerefs:
>
> My understanding is that with session.merge in SQL Alchemy it’s possible
> to draw a very clean line between entities that are persisted (or about to
> be persisted on the next flush) and entities which will never be persisted.
> This is owing to the design choice whereby SQL Alchemy doesn’t persist the
> entity you pass into the merge; instead, that is kept alone and a new
> entity is created.
>
> With this in mind, there are two ways to see Lyla’s example.
>
> One way: as soon as the tassel_thread was related to the persisted my_head
> (persisted because of the line my_head=session.merge(my_head)) then
> tassel_thread should be seen as in the session already. In this view, the
> merge is necessary and possibly error-prone, as here.
>
> Another way: instead of assigning my_head=session.merge(my_head), keep the
> unpersisted head around with say persisted_head = session.merge(my_head).
> Then relating the new tassel_thread to my_head won’t add it to the session.
> To get a record into the DB, then do a session.merge on it - everything
> works correctly this way.
>
>
> In both cases, there is the idea of a persisted object graph and a
> distinct unpersisted object graph. Once you relate a new entity to
> something in the persisted object graph, it becomes persistent.
>
> --
> SQLAlchemy -
> The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper
>
> http://www.sqlalchemy.org/
>
> To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and
> Verifiable Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full
> description.
> ---
> You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the
> Google Groups "sqlalchemy" group.
> To unsubscribe from this topic, visit
> https://groups.google.com/d/topic/sqlalchemy/oVVdbCzsNQg/unsubscribe.
> To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to
> sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
> To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
> Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>

-- 
SQLAlchemy - 
The Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper

http://www.sqlalchemy.org/

To post example code, please provide an MCVE: Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable 
Example.  See  http://stackoverflow.com/help/mcve for a full description.
--- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"sqlalchemy" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to sqlalchemy+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to sqlalchemy@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/sqlalchemy.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.