MacLochlainns Weblog

This post works through the Python configuration of Fedora instance, and continues the configuration of my LAMP VMware instance. It covers how you add the MySQL-python libraries to the Fedora instance, and provides the students with one more language opportunity for their capstone lab in the database class.

A standard Fedora Linux distribution installs Python 2.7 by default. Unfortunately, the MySQL-python library isn’t installed by default. You can verify the Python version by writing and running the following version.py program before installing the MySQL-python library:

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# Import sys library.
import sys
 
# Print the Python version.
print sys.version

You can run the version.py program dynamically like this from the current working directory:

python version.py

It will print the following:

2.7.5 (default, Nov  3 2014, 14:26:24) 
[GCC 4.8.3 20140911 (Red Hat 4.8.3-7)]

If you modify the program by adding the following first line

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#!/usr/bin/python
 
# Import sys library.
import sys
 
# Print the Python version.
print sys.version

Provided you’ve set the file permissions to read and execute, you can run the program by simply calling version.py like this from the present working directory:

./version.py

You can install the MySQL-python library with the yum utility like this:

yum install -y MySQL-python

It shows you the following output:

Loaded plugins: langpacks, refresh-packagekit
mysql-connectors-community                                  | 2.5 kB  00:00     
mysql-tools-community                                       | 2.5 kB  00:00     
mysql56-community                                           | 2.5 kB  00:00     
pgdg93                                                      | 3.6 kB  00:00     
updates/20/x86_64/metalink                                  |  12 kB  00:00     
updates                                                     | 4.9 kB  00:00     
updates/20/x86_64/primary_db                                |  13 MB  00:04     
(1/2): updates/20/x86_64/updateinfo                         | 1.9 MB  00:02     
(2/2): updates/20/x86_64/pkgtags                            | 1.4 MB  00:02     
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package MySQL-python.x86_64 0:1.2.3-8.fc20 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
 
Dependencies Resolved
 
================================================================================
 Package              Arch           Version               Repository      Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 MySQL-python         x86_64         1.2.3-8.fc20          fedora          82 k
 
Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install  1 Package
 
Total download size: 82 k
Installed size: 231 k
Downloading packages:
MySQL-python-1.2.3-8.fc20.x86_64.rpm                        |  82 kB  00:00     
Running transaction check
Running transaction test
Transaction test succeeded
Running transaction (shutdown inhibited)
  Installing : MySQL-python-1.2.3-8.fc20.x86_64                             1/1 
  Verifying  : MySQL-python-1.2.3-8.fc20.x86_64                             1/1 
 
Installed:
  MySQL-python.x86_64 0:1.2.3-8.fc20                                            
 
Complete!

After installing the MySQL-python library, you can call the following mysql_connect.py program from the local directory:

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#!/usr/bin/python
 
# Import sys library.
import MySQLdb
import sys
 
try:
  # Create new database connection.
  db = MySQLdb.connect('localhost','student','student','studentdb')
  # Query the version of the MySQL database.
  db.query("SELECT version()")
  # Assign the query results to a local variable.
  result = db.use_result()
  # Print the results.
  print "MySQL Version: %s " % result.fetch_row()[0]
except MySQLdb.Error, e:
  # Print the error.
  print "ERROR %d: %s" % (e.args[0], e.args[1])
  sys.exit(1)
finally:
  # Close the connection when it is open.
  if db:
    db.close()

Like the version.py program, set the file permissions to read and execute and call , you can run the program by simply calling mysql_connect.py program like this from the present working directory:

./mysql_connect.py

The mysql_connect.py program displays:

MySQL Version: 5.6.24

After verifying the MySQL connection, you can query actual data with the following mysql_queryset.py program:

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#!/usr/bin/python
 
# Import sys library.
import MySQLdb
import sys
 
try:
  # Create new database connection.
  db = MySQLdb.connect('localhost','student','student','studentdb')
  # Create a result set cursor.
  rs = db.cursor()
  rs.execute("SELECT item_title FROM item")
  # Assign the query results to a local variable.
  rows = rs.fetchall()
  # Print the results.
  for row in rows:
    print row
except MySQLdb.Error, e:
  # Print the error.
  print "ERROR %d: %s" % (e.args[0], e.args[1])
  sys.exit(1)
finally:
  # Close the connection when it is open.
  if db:
    db.close()

You call the mysql_queryset.py file from the present working directory like this:

./mysql_queryset.py

It prints the following:

('The Hunt for Red October',)
('Star Wars I',)
('Star Wars II',)
('Star Wars II',)
('Star Wars III',)
('The Chronicles of Narnia',)
('RoboCop',)
('Pirates of the Caribbean',)
('The Chronicles of Narnia',)
('MarioKart',)
('Splinter Cell',)
('Need for Speed',)
('The DaVinci Code',)
('Cars',)
('Beau Geste',)
('I Remember Mama',)
('Tora! Tora! Tora!',)
('A Man for All Seasons',)
('Hook',)
('Around the World in 80 Days',)
("Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone",)
('Camelot',)

You can substantially improve on the behavior of the prior example by handling each row one at a time. The following mysql_query.py program reads through the cursor result set one row at a time:

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#!/usr/bin/python
 
# Import sys library.
import MySQLdb
import sys
 
try:
  # Create new database connection.
  db = MySQLdb.connect('localhost','student','student','studentdb')
  # Create a result set cursor.
  rs = db.cursor()
  rs.execute("SELECT item_title FROM item")
  # Assign the query results to a local variable.
  for i in range(rs.rowcount):
    row = rs.fetchone()
    print row[0]
except MySQLdb.Error, e:
  # Print the error.
  print "ERROR %d: %s" % (e.args[0], e.args[1])
  sys.exit(1)
finally:
  # Close the connection when it is open.
  if db:
    db.close()

You call the mysql_query.py with the following syntax:

./mysql_query.py

It returns the following result set:

The Hunt for Red October
Star Wars I
Star Wars II
Star Wars II
Star Wars III
The Chronicles of Narnia
RoboCop
Pirates of the Caribbean
The Chronicles of Narnia
MarioKart
Splinter Cell
Need for Speed
The DaVinci Code
Cars
Beau Geste
I Remember Mama
Tora! Tora! Tora!
A Man for All Seasons
Hook
Around the World in 80 Days
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Camelot

As always, I hope this helps those looking for this type of solution. The Python tutorial web site teaches you more about the Python Programming Language. You may also find the TutorialsPoint.com site useful while you’re learning and using Python. The MySQLdb User’s Guide teaches more about working writing Python-MySQL library. The MySQLdb implements the Python Database API Specification v2.0.

First of all, Happy New Year!

IEEE Spectrum published a ranking of the most popular programming languages. Computational journalist Nick Diakopoulos wrote the article. While it may surprise some, I wasn’t surprised to find SQL in the top ten.

Nick weighted and combined 12 metrics from 10 sources (including IEEE Xplore, Google, and GitHub) to rank the most popular programming languages.

I couldn’t resist including Objective-C because it shows how the iPhone, iPad, and Mac OS impact our daily lives. At the same time, Assembly [#15] is actually more popular than Objective-C. Shell [#17] follows Objective-C. While the Visual Basic [#14] programming language still remains very popular.

There are many “why” questions raised by this list of popular programming languages. The “why” from my perspective deals with what are the market drivers for their popularity. The money drivers I see are as follows:

• Business software: Java, C++, C#, and AIDE – Android IDE (works with Java and C++ source code)
• OS X and iOS Development: Objective-C
• Development Tools: Java, C, C++, and Python
• System Admin/Utilities Tools: C, Perl, and Shell
• Web Development: Python, PHP, Ruby, and Perl
• Data Analysis: SQL, MATLAB, and R

Business Intelligence (BI) software manages most high-level data analysis tools and they’ll continue to get better over time. However, if SQL has shown us anything over 30 years it’s that ultimately we revert to it to solve problems. The conclusion from the reality of BI probably means the programming languages that develop those tools will continue to rise and so will the underlying data languages.

It’s also interesting to note that nine out of ten of the popular programming languages work with databases, like Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server. While JavaScript doesn’t access the database typically, it’s JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is supported in all the databases.

In prior years a daily update from Open World was possible, but this year my schedule was too full to support it. This is my compendium of thoughts about MySQL Connect, JavaOne, and Open World 2012.

MySQL Connect was great – good sessions re-enforcing the positive investments Oracle is making in the product. I’ll leave to others to qualify changes in what elements of technology are opened or closed along the road to a better MySQL. The announcement of Connector/Python 1.0 GA on Saturday was great news and as a community we owe a lot to Greet Vanderkelen.

NoSQL is a hot topic along with using JSON objects and it was interesting hearing of some unequal testing paradigms to position non-Oracle solutions to be “better” than Oracle solutions. Naturally, the MongoDB was the elephant in the room during those conversations. Some of the discussions seemed more like political rants than technical dialog. A great spot to start with NoSQL and JSON would be downloading Oracle’s MySQL 5.6 Release Candidate.

There were also more PostgreSQL conversations this year and fairly accurate comparisons between it and Oracle or MySQL from folks. It certainly looks like it may gain more ground.

Java 7 is awesome, and my favorite feature is clearly NIO2, reinforced at JavaOne. NIO2 brings static methods to interactions with external directory and file sources. It removes directories from the files class, which is long overdue. The nature of those static methods also happen to fit within the definition of Java code that lives inside the Oracle database and gives me a whole host of thoughts about potential in Oracle Database 12c.

Larry Ellison’s keynote was impressive because it gives us a clear vision of Oracle’s direction and Duncan Davies captured the keynote well in his blog. The continued presence of Red Hat and VMWare offers interesting reality checks to their key contributions to world wide implementation of the Oracle technical stack.

Issues that seem most critical to those I’ve chatted with are storage, security, tools, and development languages. A nice update on security can be found in the new edition of Hacking Exposed 7: Network Security Secrets & Solutions (7^th Edition).

On the forthcoming Oracle 12c release, Information Week just released a good summary view. The introduction of the R programming language on the Exadata Server leads me to wonder about what uses may magically appears in Oracle Enterprise Manager down the road. The TIOBE Index for September 2012 doesn’t list the R language in the top 20 programming languages but there’s always the future. No mention of Erlang programming language at any of the conferences that I caught but it’s inevitably on the horizon as application servers evolve.

Now we wait for the Oracle Database 12c release, which looks like something in the very short term. Perhaps right after the holidays …

It’s always interesting when somebody asks why they got an error message, and especially sweet when you’re working on something related that lets you answer the question. They were using MySQL Workbench and wanted to know why they couldn’t open a SQL script file by clicking on the Scripting menu option.

As I explained to the individual who asked, you should always click the Edit SQL Script link in the SQL Development section of the MySQL Workbench home page to work on SQL scripts. The Scripting menu option supports Python and Lua plug-ins development and scripts.

They did the following initially, which led down the rabbit warren and left them stumped because they don’t know anything about Python or Lua. This is provided to those who choose to experiment with this advanced feature of MySQL Workbench.

That presents you with a chooser dialog and it lets you pick any type of file. (You may wonder, as I did, why they didn’t restrict it to .py and .lua file extensions, which would preclude opening a .sql file. I actually logged an enhancement request to see if the development team may agree with me.) You get the following message when you choose something other than a Python or Lua script. You can click on any of the reduced size screen shots to enlarge them and make them readable.

As you may note, the dialog says the activity is unsupported by provides no cancellation button. Click the OK button and the unsupported file is loaded into a tab that is useless. All you can do is click to close the tab and dismiss the window.

After you dismiss (by clicking the x) the non-editable .sql file, you need to click on the Open Script file icon shown below.

This chooser really should open where the default is for the MySQL Workbench application script files but it doesn’t. It opens in the last accessed directory. You need to navigate to where your Python or Lua scripts are stored, which is the following directory on Windows:

C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\MySQL\Workbench\scripts

Please note that on a Windows system you can’t chose this directory option because it’s protected. You must enter the navigation bar and type it. Then, you should see any scripts that you saved from within MySQL Workbench.

The ReadFile.py below contains a rather simplistic and static program that reads a file and prints it to console (it’s small and fits in the screen). Obviously, it dispenses with a bunch to keep it small but check a Python website or book for the right way to manage a try block and handle exceptions.

Here’s the ReadFile.py file shown in the preceding and next screen shots. For those new to Python, watch out because tabs aren’t equivalent to spaces. I made a change in the script below to display the trailing semicolon because one of my students asked about it.

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# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# MySQL Workbench Python script
# ReadFile.py
# Written in MySQL Workbench 5.2.41
 
import os
f = open("c:\\Data\\MySQL\\query.sql",'rU')
while True:
    line = f.readline()
    # Parse string to avoid reading line return.
    if not line[len(line) - 1:len(line)] == ";":
      print(line[0:len(line) - 1])
    else:
      print(line)
    if not line:
        break

Life’s funny, and you can never please everyone. The latest question, “Why did I choose to use substrings when suppressing line returns from the print() function is easier?” Simple answer because the approach differs between Python 2.7 and 3.0 and I didn’t want this post to have a lot of Python nuance.

Python 2.7 (compatible with MySQL Workbench 5.2):

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import os
f = open("c:\\Data\\MySQL\\query.sql",'rU')
while True:
    line = f.readline()
    # Suppress line return.
    print(line),
    if not line:
        print
        break

Python 3.0 (not-compatible with MySQL Workbench 5.2)

You should take note that both version require a print statement on line #8. Line #6 above shows that Python 2.7 uses a comma to suppress the line return, and below line #6 shows Python 3 requires you set end equal to an empty string. Line #8 below also has a set of empty parentheses, which works in Python 3.x but not in Python 2.7. Python 2.7 would print the parentheses unless you put an empty string inside of them, like a print('') statement.

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import os
f = open("c:\\Data\\MySQL\\query.sql",'rU')
while True:
    line = f.readline()
    # Suppress line return.
    print(line, end = '')
    if not line:
        print()
        break

Hopefully, everyone concurs the parsing was simpler than explaining all these Python nuances. Although, it’s nice somebody was so curious.

If your script complies with the Python 2.7 rules (that’s what is deployed in MySQL Workbench), click the lighting bolt and your code will run and display the results. That’s shown in the last screen shot.

If you’re interesting in developing plug-ins, check this summary page or this nice example of executing a query to text. Although, rumor has it that certain features may mature over the next year …

Naturally, I hope this helps those experimenting but personally it’s a cool advanced feature of the MySQL Workbench.