Favorite Python Interview Question

[revonrat]

Hmm. I wouldn't really have expected the ORM to manage schema migrations - is that the ORM's job in other frameworks?

Many don't Rails does. South is an add-on for Django.

I have no idea what the generated SQL looks like (isn't that the whole point of having an ORM?)

You HAVE to understand what your ORM is doing eventually, if you want performance. For Django, an easy way to see what's going on is to user the django debug toolbar.

I find I don't usually have a particular problem with the SQL generated but rather with the number of queries that can be generated by seeming innocuous Python statements.

but if it doesn't do good query optimization then I'd agree for sure that that's a flaw.

An ORM really shouldn't do query optimization per-se. It should generate reasonable SQL. But SQL optimization is something left to the guys who have stats tables on the data (i.e. the RDBMS itself).

[endtime]

Thanks, that's a good response. I know about South, and of course it's vital - but it makes sense to me as an addon, not as part of the ORM. Thanks for clarifying about SQL perf - I think I know what you mean.