The release of a new InterBase Driver for Python is opening up a great opportunity for the Python community to start using an award-winning, low-footprint, embeddable database engine.
Embarcadero has released for the first time an official InterBase database driver for the Python programming language. The new InterBase Driver for Python is technically a Python 3 library package that implements the Python Database API 2.0-compliant support (as specified in https://peps.python.org/pep-0249/) for the Embarcadero InterBase Database.
The driver offers support for running applications on Windows and Linux, after installing the InterBase client library, but also works on macOS. It can be used from those operating systems to work with a regular InterBase server instance running on Windows or Linux. However, it can also be used locally with the InterBase Desktop edition and with the embedded editions of the database, IBToGo and IBLite.
The new driver by Embarcadero adds support for all configurations of InterBase and it also adds specific support for many recent features of the database, like change views and encryption.
Getting the InterBase Driver for Python
The driver is available at https://github.com/Embarcadero/InterBasePython under an open source license. It is derived from an existing InterBase Python open source driver, which in turn was based on a Firebird database driver. Besides in the GitHub project linked above, the driver can be fetched on the pip Python package manager, steps are on the GitHub readme.
What is InterBase
InterBase is an ultrafast, scalable, embeddable SQL database with commercial grade data security, disaster recovery, and change synchronization. With a long history as a powerful and reliable database system, InterBase has a very small footprint and can be deployed on a server, but even embedded in a mobile application. For more information on InterBase please visit https://www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase/.
As a developer, you can use the free InterBase Developer Edition, available to use while building a software solution based on the database. Embarcadero is also planning to make available for free distribution with customer applications the lightweight embedded version of InterBase, called IBLite. For a comparison of the different editions you can refer to https://www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase/product-editions.
If you are interested in building a software solution based on InterBase, Embarcadero also offers VAR distribution agreements, which can be adapted to the needs of each software development company.
Other InterBase Connectivity Options
InterBase, in addition to this Python driver, provides excellent connectivity and integrated drivers for Embarcadero RAD Studio, Delphi and C++Builder using the FireDAC and IBX database connectivity libraries, plus additional third party solutions. Embarcadero also offers an ADO.NET driver for .NET and Visual Studio developers, a JDBC driver for Java applications, as well as an ODBC driver for the majority of other development environments and programming languages.