I am creating a simple python program that needs to search a somewhat large database ( ~40 tables, 6 Million or so rows all together ).
Currently, I use MySQLdb to query my local MySQL database then I have some other python function that work with the data and returns some statistics and other stuff. I would like to share this with others that do not want to construct their own database. At this point the database is used for queries only.
How best can I share the database and python program as a “package”. Do I have to give up on the SQL method and switch to some sort of text file database or is there an easier way… sqlite maybe?
If the answer is sqlite how do I go about exporting my current SQL database to the sqlite database? Is there any gotchas I should know about?
Currently I use simple SELECT quarries with a few WHERE statements to locate the data I need. I am afraid that if I switched to text based database I would end up having to write a large amount of code to make these queries.
Thank you in advance for any suggestions.
EDIT
So I wrote my little python program with an sqlite3 database and it works perfectly.
I ended up using using a shell script called mysql2sqlite.sh found here to convert my MySQL database to sqlite. It worked flawlessly.
I only had to change 2 lines of python code. Awesome.
My little program runs in osx, windows and linux (ubuntu and redhat) without any changes or hassle. Thanks for the advise!
Converting your database could be as easy as an sql-dump and then an import, depending on the complexity of your db. See this post for strategies and alternatives.