Type Mapping

pyaltibase follows PEP 249 type objects and constructors.

PEP 249 type objects

DBAPIType supports comparison with integers and other DBAPIType objects.

Object	ODBC SQL type codes	Category
STRING	{1, 12} (SQL_CHAR, SQL_VARCHAR)	Character/string families
BINARY	{-2, -3, -4} (SQL_BINARY, SQL_VARBINARY, SQL_LONGVARBINARY)	Binary payloads
NUMBER	{-5, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8} (SQL_BIGINT, SQL_NUMERIC…SQL_DOUBLE)	Numeric families
DATETIME	{91, 92, 93} (SQL_TYPE_DATE, SQL_TYPE_TIME, SQL_TYPE_TIMESTAMP)	Date/time families
ROWID	{15}	Row identifier

Type constructors

Constructor	Returns	Typical use
Date(y, m, d)	datetime.date	Bind SQL DATE
Time(h, m, s)	datetime.time	Bind SQL TIME
Timestamp(...)	datetime.datetime	Bind SQL TIMESTAMP
DateFromTicks(t)	datetime.date	Convert Unix ticks to date
TimeFromTicks(t)	datetime.time	Convert Unix ticks to time
TimestampFromTicks(t)	datetime.datetime	Convert Unix ticks to timestamp
Binary(v)	bytes	Bind binary data (bytes, bytearray, or UTF-8 encoded str)

Altibase SQL type to Python type guidance

The exact runtime mapping comes from Altibase ODBC driver + pyodbc. The following table summarizes common outcomes when fetching rows:

Altibase SQL type (common)	Typical Python value	DB-API category
CHAR, VARCHAR	str	STRING
NCHAR, NVARCHAR	str	STRING
CLOB	str (driver-dependent for large values)	STRING
BINARY, VARBINARY	bytes	BINARY
BLOB	bytes (driver-dependent for large values)	BINARY
SMALLINT, INTEGER, BIGINT	int	NUMBER
NUMERIC, DECIMAL	decimal.Decimal or float (driver-dependent)	NUMBER
REAL, FLOAT, DOUBLE	float	NUMBER
DATE	datetime.date	DATETIME
TIME	datetime.time	DATETIME
TIMESTAMP	datetime.datetime	DATETIME
ROWID	Driver-provided scalar	ROWID

Driver-dependent behavior

Large object retrieval and some numeric conversions may vary by ODBC driver version and settings. Validate mappings in your environment.

Type resolution flow

```mermaid flowchart TD A[Altibase column type] --> B[ODBC metadata/code] B --> C[pyodbc native value] C --> D[pyaltibase tuple conversion] D --> E[Application-level Python type]

F[PEP 249 helpers] --> G[Date/Time/Timestamp/Binary constructors]
G --> E

```

Practical examples

import pyaltibase
from pyaltibase import Date, Timestamp, Binary

with pyaltibase.connect(host="localhost", user="sys", password="manager") as conn:
    with conn.cursor() as cur:
        cur.execute(
            "INSERT INTO sample_table(created_on, created_at, payload) VALUES (?, ?, ?)",
            [Date(2026, 4, 6), Timestamp(2026, 4, 6, 10, 30, 0), Binary("hello")],
        )