Yup, Im now diving into Python. So far, Im loving it. Not as hard as java, very pragmatic programming. I got converted when I saw Awaretek’s “Python Learning Foundation” which I believe deserves a lot of merit for promoting Python. One of the podcasts from www.directionmag.com states that Python is #4 among GIS professional as a must-have progamming language experience.

Moving forward, I kickstarted with a few tutorials. Fast-reading most of the tutorials from http://www.upriss.org.uk/python/PythonCourse.html and trying out the exercises. It was fabolous. Simple yet powerful. Then I saw Alex Martelli’s tutorial from http://www.aleax.it/Python/py25.pdf. Those who have programming experience like Java/C, would benefit much from Martell’s PDF tutorial.

Next stop.. using databases with python.. Head on to the database section of AwareTek.

  1. I’ve dowloaded Python’s DB Interface for Postgres ‘psycopg2‘. http://www.initd.org/tracker/psycopg/wiki/PsycopgTwo

  2. Steve Holden’s dbPythonIntro.pdf. Presents a quick overview of the DB API. Important pages would be:

  • 26/65 Connection Example (includes Postgres)
  • 29/65 Connection Methods
  • 30/65 Executing Queries
  • 31/65 Retrieving Results
  1. Accessing PostgreSQL with Python and Psycopg2. This three page tutorial will quickly give you a background of how to execute queries, fetch queries using column index or by names.