Release: 2.0.37 | Release Date: January 9, 2025

# SQLAlchemy 2.0 Documentation

# What’s New in SQLAlchemy 2.0?

Note for Readers

SQLAlchemy 2.0’s transition documents are separated into two documents - one which details major API shifts from the 1.x to 2.x series, and the other which details new features and behaviors relative to SQLAlchemy 1.4:

- SQLAlchemy 2.0 - Major Migration Guide - 1.x to 2.x API shifts

- What’s New in SQLAlchemy 2.0? - this document, new features and behaviors for SQLAlchemy 2.0

Readers who have not yet updated their 1.4 application to follow SQLAlchemy 2.0 engine and ORM conventions may navigate to SQLAlchemy 2.0 - Major Migration Guide for a guide to ensuring SQLAlchemy 2.0 compatibility, which is a prerequisite for having working code under version 2.0.

About this Document

This document describes changes between SQLAlchemy version 1.4 and SQLAlchemy version 2.0, independent of the major changes between 1.x style and 2.0 style usage. Readers should start with the SQLAlchemy 2.0 - Major Migration Guide document to get an overall picture of the major compatibility changes between the 1.x and 2.x series.

Aside from the major 1.x->2.x migration path, the next largest paradigm shift in SQLAlchemy 2.0 is deep integration with PEP 484 typing practices and current capabilities, particularly within the ORM. New type-driven ORM declarative styles inspired by Python dataclasses, as well as new integrations with dataclasses themselves, complement an overall approach that no longer requires stubs and also goes very far towards providing a type-aware method chain from SQL statement to result set.

The prominence of Python typing is significant not only so that type checkers like mypy can run without plugins; more significantly it allows IDEs like vscode and pycharm to take a much more active role in assisting with the composition of a SQLAlchemy application.

## New Typing Support in Core and ORM - Stubs / Extensions no longer used

The approach to typing for Core and ORM has been completely reworked, compared to the interim approach that was provided in version 1.4 via the sqlalchemy2-stubs package. The new approach begins at the most fundamental element in SQLAlchemy which is the `Column`, or more accurately the `ColumnElement` that underlies all SQL expressions that have a type. This expression-level typing then extends into the area of statement construction, statement execution, and result sets, and finally into the ORM where new declarative forms allow for fully typed ORM models that integrate all the way from statement to result set.

Tip

Typing support should be considered beta level software for the 2.0 series. Typing details are subject to change however significant backwards-incompatible changes are not planned.

### SQL Expression / Statement / Result Set Typing

This section provides background and examples for SQLAlchemy’s new SQL expression typing approach, which extends from base `ColumnElement` constructs through SQL statements and result sets and into realm of ORM mapping.

#### Rationale and Overview

Tip

This section is an architectural discussion. Skip ahead to SQL Expression Typing - Examples to just see what the new typing looks like.

In sqlalchemy2-stubs, SQL expressions were typed as generics that then referred to a `TypeEngine` object such as `Integer`, `DateTime`, or `String` as their generic argument (such as `Column[Integer]`). This was itself a departure from what the original Dropbox sqlalchemy-stubs package did, where `Column` and its foundational constructs were directly generic on Python types, such as `int`, `datetime` and `str`. It was hoped that since `Integer` / `DateTime` / `String` themselves are generic against `int` / `datetime` / `str`, there would be ways to maintain both levels of information and to be able to extract the Python type from a column expression via the `TypeEngine` as an intermediary construct. However, this is not the case, as PEP 484 doesn’t really have a rich enough feature set for this to be viable, lacking capabilities such as higher kinded TypeVars.

So after a deep assessment of the current capabilities of PEP 484, SQLAlchemy 2.0 has realized the original wisdom of sqlalchemy-stubs in this area and returned to linking column expressions directly to Python types. This does mean that if one has SQL expressions to different subtypes, like `Column(VARCHAR)` vs. `Column(Unicode)`, the specifics of those two `String` subtypes is not carried along as the type only carries along `str`, but in practice this is usually not an issue and it is generally vastly more useful that the Python type is immediately present, as it represents the in-Python data one will be storing and receiving for this column directly.

Concretely, this means that an expression like `Column('id', Integer)` is typed as `Column[int]`. This allows for a viable pipeline of SQLAlchemy construct -> Python datatype to be set up, without the need for typing plugins. Crucially, it allows full interoperability with the ORM’s paradigm of using `select()` and `Row` constructs that reference ORM mapped class types (e.g. a `Row` containing instances of user-mapped instances, such as the `User` and `Address` examples used in our tutorials). While Python typing currently has very limited support for customization of tuple-types (where PEP 646, the first pep that attempts to deal with tuple-like objects, was intentionally limited in its functionality and by itself is not yet viable for arbitrary tuple manipulation), a fairly decent approach has been devised that allows for basic `select()` -> `Result` -> `Row` typing to function, including for ORM classes, where at the point at which a `Row` object is to be unpacked into individual column entries, a small typing-oriented accessor is added that allows the individual Python values to maintain the Python type linked to the SQL expression from which they originated (translation: it works).

#### SQL Expression Typing - Examples

A brief tour of typing behaviors. Comments indicate what one would see hovering over the code in vscode (or roughly what typing tools would display when using the reveal_type() helper):

- Simple Python Types Assigned to SQL Expressions

      # (variable) str_col: ColumnClause[str]
      str_col = column("a", String)

      # (variable) int_col: ColumnClause[int]
      int_col = column("a", Integer)

      # (variable) expr1: ColumnElement[str]
      expr1 = str_col + "x"

      # (variable) expr2: ColumnElement[int]
      expr2 = int_col + 10

      # (variable) expr3: ColumnElement[bool]
      expr3 = int_col == 15

- Individual SQL expressions assigned to `select()` constructs, as well as any row-returning construct, including row-returning DML such as `Insert` with `Insert.returning()`, are packed into a `Tuple[]` type which retains the Python type for each element.

      # (variable) stmt: Select[Tuple[str, int]]
      stmt = select(str_col, int_col)

      # (variable) stmt: ReturningInsert[Tuple[str, int]]
      ins_stmt = insert(table("t")).returning(str_col, int_col)

- The `Tuple[]` type from any row returning construct, when invoked with an `.execute()` method, carries through to `Result` and `Row`. In order to unpack the `Row` object as a tuple, the `Row.tuple()` or `Row.t` accessor essentially casts the `Row` into the corresponding `Tuple[]` (though remains the same `Row` object at runtime).

      with engine.connect() as conn:
          # (variable) stmt: Select[Tuple[str, int]]
          stmt = select(str_col, int_col)

          # (variable) result: Result[Tuple[str, int]]
          result = conn.execute(stmt)

          # (variable) row: Row[Tuple[str, int]] | None
          row = result.first()

          if row is not None:
              # for typed tuple unpacking or indexed access,
              # use row.tuple() or row.t  (this is the small typing-oriented accessor)
              strval, intval = row.t

              # (variable) strval: str
              strval

              # (variable) intval: int
              intval

- Scalar values for single-column statements do the right thing with methods like `Connection.scalar()`, `Result.scalars()`, etc.

      # (variable) data: Sequence[str]
      data = connection.execute(select(str_col)).scalars().all()

- The above support for row-returning constructs works the best with ORM mapped classes, as a mapped class can list out specific types for its members. The example below sets up a class using new type-aware syntaxes, described in the following section:

      from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase
      from sqlalchemy.orm import Mapped
      from sqlalchemy.orm import mapped_column

      class Base(DeclarativeBase):
          pass

      class User(Base):
          __tablename__ = "user_account"

          id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
          name: Mapped[str]
          addresses: Mapped[List["Address"]] = relationship()

      class Address(Base):
          __tablename__ = "address"

          id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
          email_address: Mapped[str]
          user_id = mapped_column(ForeignKey("user_account.id"))

  With the above mapping, the attributes are typed and express themselves all the way from statement to result set:

      with Session(engine) as session:
          # (variable) stmt: Select[Tuple[int, str]]
          stmt_1 = select(User.id, User.name)

          # (variable) result_1: Result[Tuple[int, str]]
          result_1 = session.execute(stmt_1)

          # (variable) intval: int
          # (variable) strval: str
          intval, strval = result_1.one().t

  Mapped classes themselves are also types, and behave the same way, such as a SELECT against two mapped classes:

      with Session(engine) as session:
          # (variable) stmt: Select[Tuple[User, Address]]
          stmt_2 = select(User, Address).join_from(User, Address)

          # (variable) result_2: Result[Tuple[User, Address]]
          result_2 = session.execute(stmt_2)

          # (variable) user_obj: User
          # (variable) address_obj: Address
          user_obj, address_obj = result_2.one().t

  When selecting mapped classes, constructs like `aliased` work as well, maintaining the column-level attributes of the original mapped class as well as the return type expected from a statement:

      with Session(engine) as session:
          # this is in fact an Annotated type, but typing tools don't
          # generally display this

          # (variable) u1: Type[User]
          u1 = aliased(User)

          # (variable) stmt: Select[Tuple[User, User, str]]
          stmt = select(User, u1, User.name).filter(User.id == 5)

          # (variable) result: Result[Tuple[User, User, str]]
          result = session.execute(stmt)

- Core Table does not yet have a decent way to maintain typing of `Column` objects when accessing them via the `Table.c` accessor.

  Since `Table` is set up as an instance of a class, and the `Table.c` accessor typically accesses `Column` objects dynamically by name, there’s not yet an established typing approach for this; some alternative syntax would be needed.

- ORM classes, scalars, etc. work great.

  The typical use case of selecting ORM classes, as scalars or tuples, all works, both 2.0 and 1.x style queries, getting back the exact type either by itself or contained within the appropriate container such as `Sequence[]`, `List[]` or `Iterator[]`:

      # (variable) users1: Sequence[User]
      users1 = session.scalars(select(User)).all()

      # (variable) user: User
      user = session.query(User).one()

      # (variable) user_iter: Iterator[User]
      user_iter = iter(session.scalars(select(User)))

- Legacy `Query` gains tuple typing as well.

  The typing support for `Query` goes well beyond what sqlalchemy-stubs or sqlalchemy2-stubs offered, where both scalar-object as well as tuple-typed `Query` objects will retain result level typing for most cases:

      # (variable) q1: RowReturningQuery[Tuple[int, str]]
      q1 = session.query(User.id, User.name)

      # (variable) rows: List[Row[Tuple[int, str]]]
      rows = q1.all()

      # (variable) q2: Query[User]
      q2 = session.query(User)

      # (variable) users: List[User]
      users = q2.all()

#### the catch - all stubs must be uninstalled

A key caveat with the typing support is that all SQLAlchemy stubs packages must be uninstalled for typing to work. When running mypy against a Python virtualenv, this is only a matter of uninstalling those packages. However, a SQLAlchemy stubs package is also currently part of typeshed, which itself is bundled into some typing tools such as Pylance, so it may be necessary in some cases to locate the files for these packages and delete them, if they are in fact interfering with the new typing working correctly.

Once SQLAlchemy 2.0 is released in final status, typeshed will remove SQLAlchemy from its own stubs source.

### ORM Declarative Models

SQLAlchemy 1.4 introduced the first SQLAlchemy-native ORM typing support using a combination of sqlalchemy2-stubs and the Mypy Plugin. In SQLAlchemy 2.0, the Mypy plugin remains available, and has been updated to work with SQLAlchemy 2.0’s typing system. However, it should now be considered deprecated, as applications now have a straightforward path to adopting the new typing support that does not use plugins or stubs.

#### Overview

The fundamental approach for the new system is that mapped column declarations, when using a fully Declarative model (that is, not hybrid declarative or imperative configurations, which are unchanged), are first derived at runtime by inspecting the type annotation on the left side of each attribute declaration, if present. Left hand type annotations are expected to be contained within the `Mapped` generic type, otherwise the attribute is not considered to be a mapped attribute. The attribute declaration may then refer to the `mapped_column()` construct on the right hand side, which is used to provide additional Core-level schema information about the `Column` to be produced and mapped. This right hand side declaration is optional if a `Mapped` annotation is present on the left side; if no annotation is present on the left side, then the `mapped_column()` may be used as an exact replacement for the `Column` directive where it will provide for more accurate (but not exact) typing behavior of the attribute, even though no annotation is present.

The approach is inspired by the approach of Python dataclasses which starts with an annotation on the left, then allows for an optional `dataclasses.field()` specification on the right; the key difference from the dataclasses approach is that SQLAlchemy’s approach is strictly opt-in, where existing mappings that use `Column` without any type annotations continue to work as they always have, and the `mapped_column()` construct may be used as a direct replacement for `Column` without any explicit type annotations. Only for exact attribute-level Python types to be present is the use of explicit annotations with `Mapped` required. These annotations may be used on an as-needed, per-attribute basis for those attributes where specific types are helpful; non-annotated attributes that use `mapped_column()` will be typed as `Any` at the instance level.

#### Migrating an Existing Mapping

Transitioning to the new ORM approach begins as more verbose, but becomes more succinct than was previously possible as the available new features are used fully. The following steps detail a typical transition and then continue on to illustrate some more options.

##### Step one - `declarative_base()` is superseded by `DeclarativeBase`.

One observed limitation in Python typing is that there seems to be no ability to have a class dynamically generated from a function which then is understood by typing tools as a base for new classes. To solve this problem without plugins, the usual call to `declarative_base()` can be replaced with using the `DeclarativeBase` class, which produces the same `Base` object as usual, except that typing tools understand it:

    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        pass

##### Step two - replace Declarative use of `Column` with `mapped_column()`

The `mapped_column()` is an ORM-typing aware construct that can be swapped directly for the use of `Column`. Given a 1.x style mapping as:

    from sqlalchemy import Column
    from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship
    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        pass

    class User(Base):
        __tablename__ = "user_account"

        id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        name = Column(String(30), nullable=False)
        fullname = Column(String)
        addresses = relationship("Address", back_populates="user")

    class Address(Base):
        __tablename__ = "address"

        id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        email_address = Column(String, nullable=False)
        user_id = Column(ForeignKey("user_account.id"), nullable=False)
        user = relationship("User", back_populates="addresses")

We replace `Column` with `mapped_column()`; no arguments need to change:

    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase
    from sqlalchemy.orm import mapped_column
    from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        pass

    class User(Base):
        __tablename__ = "user_account"

        id = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        name = mapped_column(String(30), nullable=False)
        fullname = mapped_column(String)
        addresses = relationship("Address", back_populates="user")

    class Address(Base):
        __tablename__ = "address"

        id = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        email_address = mapped_column(String, nullable=False)
        user_id = mapped_column(ForeignKey("user_account.id"), nullable=False)
        user = relationship("User", back_populates="addresses")

The individual columns above are not yet typed with Python types, and are instead typed as `Mapped[Any]`; this is because we can declare any column either with `Optional` or not, and there’s no way to have a “guess” in place that won’t cause typing errors when we type it explicitly.

However, at this step, our above mapping has appropriate descriptor types set up for all attributes and may be used in queries as well as for instance-level manipulation, all of which will pass mypy –strict mode with no plugins.

##### Step three - apply exact Python types as needed using `Mapped`.

This can be done for all attributes for which exact typing is desired; attributes that are fine being left as `Any` may be skipped. For context we also illustrate `Mapped` being used for a `relationship()` where we apply an exact type. The mapping within this interim step will be more verbose, however with proficiency, this step can be combined with subsequent steps to update mappings more directly:

    from typing import List
    from typing import Optional
    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase
    from sqlalchemy.orm import Mapped
    from sqlalchemy.orm import mapped_column
    from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        pass

    class User(Base):
        __tablename__ = "user_account"

        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        name: Mapped[str] = mapped_column(String(30), nullable=False)
        fullname: Mapped[Optional[str]] = mapped_column(String)
        addresses: Mapped[List["Address"]] = relationship("Address", back_populates="user")

    class Address(Base):
        __tablename__ = "address"

        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        email_address: Mapped[str] = mapped_column(String, nullable=False)
        user_id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(ForeignKey("user_account.id"), nullable=False)
        user: Mapped["User"] = relationship("User", back_populates="addresses")

At this point, our ORM mapping is fully typed and will produce exact-typed `select()`, `Query` and `Result` constructs. We now can proceed to pare down redundancy in the mapping declaration.

##### Step four - remove `mapped_column()` directives where no longer needed

All `nullable` parameters can be implied using `Optional[]`; in the absence of `Optional[]`, `nullable` defaults to `False`. All SQL types without arguments such as `Integer` and `String` can be expressed as a Python annotation alone. A `mapped_column()` directive with no parameters can be removed entirely. `relationship()` now derives its class from the left hand annotation, supporting forward references as well (as `relationship()` has supported string-based forward references for ten years already ;) ):

    from typing import List
    from typing import Optional
    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase
    from sqlalchemy.orm import Mapped
    from sqlalchemy.orm import mapped_column
    from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        pass

    class User(Base):
        __tablename__ = "user_account"

        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
        name: Mapped[str] = mapped_column(String(30))
        fullname: Mapped[Optional[str]]
        addresses: Mapped[List["Address"]] = relationship(back_populates="user")

    class Address(Base):
        __tablename__ = "address"

        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
        email_address: Mapped[str]
        user_id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(ForeignKey("user_account.id"))
        user: Mapped["User"] = relationship(back_populates="addresses")

##### Step five - make use of pep-593 `Annotated` to package common directives into types

This is a radical new capability that presents an alternative, or complementary approach, to declarative mixins as a means to provide type oriented configuration, and also replaces the need for `declared_attr` decorated functions in most cases.

First, the Declarative mapping allows the mapping of Python type to SQL type, such as `str` to `String`, to be customized using `registry.type_annotation_map`. Using PEP 593 `Annotated` allows us to create variants of a particular Python type so that the same type, such as `str`, may be used which each provide variants of `String`, as below where use of an `Annotated` `str` called `str50` will indicate `String(50)`:

    from typing_extensions import Annotated
    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase

    str50 = Annotated[str, 50]

    # declarative base with a type-level override, using a type that is
    # expected to be used in multiple places
    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        type_annotation_map = {
            str50: String(50),
        }

Second, Declarative will extract full `mapped_column()` definitions from the left hand type if `Annotated[]` is used, by passing a `mapped_column()` construct as any argument to the `Annotated[]` construct (credit to @adriangb01 for illustrating this idea). This capability may be extended in future releases to also include `relationship()`, `composite()` and other constructs, but currently is limited to `mapped_column()`. The example below adds additional `Annotated` types in addition to our `str50` example to illustrate this feature:

    from typing_extensions import Annotated
    from typing import List
    from typing import Optional
    from sqlalchemy import ForeignKey
    from sqlalchemy import String
    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase
    from sqlalchemy.orm import Mapped
    from sqlalchemy.orm import mapped_column
    from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship

    # declarative base from previous example
    str50 = Annotated[str, 50]

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        type_annotation_map = {
            str50: String(50),
        }

    # set up mapped_column() overrides, using whole column styles that are
    # expected to be used in multiple places
    intpk = Annotated[int, mapped_column(primary_key=True)]
    user_fk = Annotated[int, mapped_column(ForeignKey("user_account.id"))]

    class User(Base):
        __tablename__ = "user_account"

        id: Mapped[intpk]
        name: Mapped[str50]
        fullname: Mapped[Optional[str]]
        addresses: Mapped[List["Address"]] = relationship(back_populates="user")

    class Address(Base):
        __tablename__ = "address"

        id: Mapped[intpk]
        email_address: Mapped[str50]
        user_id: Mapped[user_fk]
        user: Mapped["User"] = relationship(back_populates="addresses")

Above, columns that are mapped with `Mapped[str50]`, `Mapped[intpk]`, or `Mapped[user_fk]` draw from both the `registry.type_annotation_map` as well as the `Annotated` construct directly in order to re-use pre-established typing and column configurations.

##### Optional step - turn mapped classes into dataclasses

We can turn mapped classes into dataclasses, where a key advantage is that we can build a strictly-typed `__init__()` method with explicit positional, keyword only, and default arguments, not to mention we get methods such as `__str__()` and `__repr__()` for free. The next section Native Support for Dataclasses Mapped as ORM Models illustrates further transformation of the above model.

##### Typing is supported from step 3 onwards

With the above examples, any example from “step 3” on forward will include that the attributes of the model are typed and will populate through to `select()`, `Query`, and `Row` objects:

    # (variable) stmt: Select[Tuple[int, str]]
    stmt = select(User.id, User.name)

    with Session(e) as sess:
        for row in sess.execute(stmt):
            # (variable) row: Row[Tuple[int, str]]
            print(row)

        # (variable) users: Sequence[User]
        users = sess.scalars(select(User)).all()

        # (variable) users_legacy: List[User]
        users_legacy = sess.query(User).all()

See also

Declarative Table with mapped_column() - Updated Declarative documentation for Declarative generation and mapping of `Table` columns.

### Using Legacy Mypy-Typed Models

SQLAlchemy applications that use the Mypy plugin with explicit annotations that don’t use `Mapped` in their annotations are subject to errors under the new system, as such annotations are flagged as errors when using constructs such as `relationship()`.

The section Migration to 2.0 Step Six - Add __allow_unmapped__ to explicitly typed ORM models illustrates how to temporarily disable these errors from being raised for a legacy ORM model that uses explicit annotations.

See also

Migration to 2.0 Step Six - Add __allow_unmapped__ to explicitly typed ORM models

### Native Support for Dataclasses Mapped as ORM Models

The new ORM Declarative features introduced above at ORM Declarative Models introduced the new `mapped_column()` construct and illustrated type-centric mapping with optional use of PEP 593 `Annotated`. We can take the mapping one step further by integrating this with Python dataclasses. This new feature is made possible via PEP 681 which allows for type checkers to recognize classes that are dataclass compatible, or are fully dataclasses, but were declared through alternate APIs.

Using the dataclasses feature, mapped classes gain an `__init__()` method that supports positional arguments as well as customizable default values for optional keyword arguments. As mentioned previously, dataclasses also generate many useful methods such as `__str__()`, `__eq__()`. Dataclass serialization methods such as dataclasses.asdict() and dataclasses.astuple() also work, but don’t currently accommodate for self-referential structures, which makes them less viable for mappings that have bidirectional relationships.

SQLAlchemy’s current integration approach converts the user-defined class into a real dataclass to provide runtime functionality; the feature makes use of the existing dataclass feature introduced in SQLAlchemy 1.4 at Python Dataclasses, attrs Supported w/ Declarative, Imperative Mappings to produce an equivalent runtime mapping with a fully integrated configuration style, which is also more correctly typed than was possible with the previous approach.

To support dataclasses in compliance with PEP 681, ORM constructs like `mapped_column()` and `relationship()` accept additional PEP 681 arguments `init`, `default`, and `default_factory` which are passed along to the dataclass creation process. These arguments currently must be present in an explicit directive on the right side, just as they would be used with `dataclasses.field()`; they currently can’t be local to an `Annotated` construct on the left side. To support the convenient use of `Annotated` while still supporting dataclass configuration, `mapped_column()` can merge a minimal set of right-hand arguments with that of an existing `mapped_column()` construct located on the left side within an `Annotated` construct, so that most of the succinctness is maintained, as will be seen below.

To enable dataclasses using class inheritance we make use of the `MappedAsDataclass` mixin, either directly on each class, or on the `Base` class, as illustrated below where we further modify the example mapping from “Step 5” of ORM Declarative Models:

    from typing_extensions import Annotated
    from typing import List
    from typing import Optional
    from sqlalchemy import ForeignKey
    from sqlalchemy import String
    from sqlalchemy.orm import DeclarativeBase
    from sqlalchemy.orm import Mapped
    from sqlalchemy.orm import MappedAsDataclass
    from sqlalchemy.orm import mapped_column
    from sqlalchemy.orm import relationship

    class Base(MappedAsDataclass, DeclarativeBase):
        """subclasses will be converted to dataclasses"""

    intpk = Annotated[int, mapped_column(primary_key=True)]
    str30 = Annotated[str, mapped_column(String(30))]
    user_fk = Annotated[int, mapped_column(ForeignKey("user_account.id"))]

    class User(Base):
        __tablename__ = "user_account"

        id: Mapped[intpk] = mapped_column(init=False)
        name: Mapped[str30]
        fullname: Mapped[Optional[str]] = mapped_column(default=None)
        addresses: Mapped[List["Address"]] = relationship(
            back_populates="user", default_factory=list
        )

    class Address(Base):
        __tablename__ = "address"

        id: Mapped[intpk] = mapped_column(init=False)
        email_address: Mapped[str]
        user_id: Mapped[user_fk] = mapped_column(init=False)
        user: Mapped["User"] = relationship(back_populates="addresses", default=None)

The above mapping has used the `@dataclasses.dataclass` decorator directly on each mapped class at the same time that the declarative mapping was set up, internally setting up each `dataclasses.field()` directive as indicated. `User` / `Address` structures can be created using positional arguments as configured:

    >>> u1 = User("username", fullname="full name", addresses=[Address("email@address")])
    >>> u1
    User(id=None, name='username', fullname='full name', addresses=[Address(id=None, email_address='email@address', user_id=None, user=...)])

See also

Declarative Dataclass Mapping

## Optimized ORM bulk insert now implemented for all backends other than MySQL

The dramatic performance improvement introduced in the 1.4 series and described at ORM Batch inserts with psycopg2 now batch statements with RETURNING in most cases has now been generalized to all included backends that support RETURNING, which is all backends other than MySQL: SQLite, MariaDB, PostgreSQL (all drivers), and Oracle; SQL Server has support but is temporarily disabled in version 2.0.9 [1]. While the original feature was most critical for the psycopg2 driver which otherwise had major performance issues when using `cursor.executemany()`, the change is also critical for other PostgreSQL drivers such as asyncpg, as when using RETURNING, single-statement INSERT statements are still unacceptably slow, as well as when using SQL Server that also seems to have very slow executemany speed for INSERT statements regardless of whether or not RETURNING is used.

The performance of the new feature provides an almost across-the-board order of magnitude performance increase for basically every driver when INSERTing ORM objects that don’t have a pre-assigned primary key value, as indicated in the table below, in most cases specific to the use of RETURNING which is not normally supported with executemany().

The psycopg2 “fast execution helper” approach consists of transforming an INSERT..RETURNING statement with a single parameter set into a single statement that INSERTs many parameter sets, using multiple “VALUES…” clauses so that it can accommodate many parameter sets at once. Parameter sets are then typically batched into groups of 1000 or similar, so that no single INSERT statement is excessively large, and the INSERT statement is then invoked for each batch of parameters, rather than for each individual parameter set. Primary key values and server defaults are returned by RETURNING, which continues to work as each statement execution is invoked using `cursor.execute()`, rather than `cursor.executemany()`.

This allows many rows to be inserted in one statement while also being able to return newly-generated primary key values as well as SQL and server defaults. SQLAlchemy historically has always needed to invoke one statement per parameter set, as it relied upon Python DBAPI Features such as `cursor.lastrowid` which do not support multiple rows.

With most databases now offering RETURNING (with the conspicuous exception of MySQL, given that MariaDB supports it), the new change generalizes the psycopg2 “fast execution helper” approach to all dialects that support RETURNING, which now includes SQlite and MariaDB, and for which no other approach for “executemany plus RETURNING” is possible, which includes SQLite, MariaDB, and all PG drivers. The cx_Oracle and oracledb drivers used for Oracle support RETURNING with executemany natively, and this has also been implemented to provide equivalent performance improvements. With SQLite and MariaDB now offering RETURNING support, ORM use of `cursor.lastrowid` is nearly a thing of the past, with only MySQL still relying upon it.

For INSERT statements that don’t use RETURNING, traditional executemany() behavior is used for most backends, with the current exception of psycopg2, which has very slow executemany() performance overall and are still improved by the “insertmanyvalues” approach.

### Benchmarks

SQLAlchemy includes a Performance Suite within the `examples/` directory, where we can make use of the `bulk_insert` suite to benchmark INSERTs of many rows using both Core and ORM in different ways.

For the tests below, we are inserting 100,000 objects, and in all cases we actually have 100,000 real Python ORM objects in memory, either created up front or generated on the fly. All databases other than SQLite are run over a local network connection, not localhost; this causes the “slower” results to be extremely slow.

Operations that are improved by this feature include:

- unit of work flushes for objects added to the session using `Session.add()` and `Session.add_all()`.

- The new ORM Bulk Insert Statement feature, which improves upon the experimental version of this feature first introduced in SQLAlchemy 1.4.

- the `Session` “bulk” operations described at Bulk Operations, which are superseded by the above mentioned ORM Bulk Insert feature.

To get a sense of the scale of the operation, below are performance measurements using the `test_flush_no_pk` performance suite, which historically represents SQLAlchemy’s worst-case INSERT performance task, where objects that don’t have primary key values need to be INSERTed, and then the newly generated primary key values must be fetched so that the objects can be used for subsequent flush operations, such as establishment within relationships, flushing joined-inheritance models, etc:

    @Profiler.profile
    def test_flush_no_pk(n):
        """INSERT statements via the ORM (batched with RETURNING if available),
        fetching generated row id"""
        session = Session(bind=engine)
        for chunk in range(0, n, 1000):
            session.add_all(
                [
                    Customer(
                        name="customer name %d" % i,
                        description="customer description %d" % i,
                    )
                    for i in range(chunk, chunk + 1000)
                ]
            )
            session.flush()
        session.commit()

This test can be run from any SQLAlchemy source tree as follows:

    python -m examples.performance.bulk_inserts --test test_flush_no_pk

The table below summarizes performance measurements with the latest 1.4 series of SQLAlchemy compared to 2.0, both running the same test:

Driver | SQLA 1.4 Time (secs) | SQLA 2.0 Time (secs)
sqlite+pysqlite2 (memory) | 6.204843 | 3.554856
postgresql+asyncpg (network) | 88.292285 | 4.561492
postgresql+psycopg (network) | N/A (psycopg3) | 4.861368
mssql+pyodbc (network) | 158.396667 | 4.825139
oracle+cx_Oracle (network) | 92.603953 | 4.809520
mariadb+mysqldb (network) | 71.705197 | 4.075377

Note

[ 1 ]

The feature is was temporarily disabled for SQL Server in SQLAlchemy 2.0.9 due to issues with row ordering when RETURNING is used. In SQLAlchemy 2.0.10, the feature is re-enabled, with special case handling for the unit of work’s requirement for RETURNING to be ordered.

Two additional drivers have no change in performance; the psycopg2 drivers, for which fast executemany was already implemented in SQLAlchemy 1.4, and MySQL, which continues to not offer RETURNING support:

Driver | SQLA 1.4 Time (secs) | SQLA 2.0 Time (secs)
postgresql+psycopg2 (network) | 4.704876 | 4.699883
mysql+mysqldb (network) | 77.281997 | 76.132995

### Summary of Changes

The following bullets list the individual changes made within 2.0 in order to get all drivers to this state:

- RETURNING implemented for SQLite - #6195

- RETURNING implemented for MariaDB - #7011

- Fix multi-row RETURNING for Oracle - #6245

- make insert() executemany() support RETURNING for as many dialects as possible, usually with VALUES() - #6047

- Emit a warning when RETURNING w/ executemany is used for non-supporting backend (currently no RETURNING backend has this limitation) - #7907

- The ORM `Mapper.eager_defaults` parameter now defaults to a a new setting `"auto"`, which will enable “eager defaults” automatically for INSERT statements, when the backend in use supports RETURNING with “insertmanyvalues”. See Fetching Server-Generated Defaults for documentation.

See also

“Insert Many Values” Behavior for INSERT statements - Documentation and background on the new feature as well as how to configure it

## ORM-enabled Insert, Upsert, Update and Delete Statements, with ORM RETURNING

SQLAlchemy 1.4 ported the features of the legacy `Query` object to 2.0 style execution, which meant that the `Select` construct could be passed to `Session.execute()` to deliver ORM results. Support was also added for `Update` and `Delete` to be passed to `Session.execute()`, to the degree that they could provide implementations of `Query.update()` and `Query.delete()`.

The major missing element has been support for the `Insert` construct. The 1.4 documentation addressed this with some recipes for “inserts” and “upserts” with use of `Select.from_statement()` to integrate RETURNING into an ORM context. 2.0 now fully closes the gap by integrating direct support for `Insert` as an enhanced version of the `Session.bulk_insert_mappings()` method, along with full ORM RETURNING support for all DML structures.

### Bulk Insert with RETURNING

`Insert` can be passed to `Session.execute()`, with or without `Insert.returning()`, which when passed with a separate parameter list will invoke the same process as was previously implemented by `Session.bulk_insert_mappings()`, with additional enhancements. This will optimize the batching of rows making use of the new fast insertmany feature, while also adding support for heterogeneous parameter sets and multiple-table mappings like joined table inheritance:

    >>> users = session.scalars(
    ...     insert(User).returning(User),
    ...     [
    ...         {"name": "spongebob", "fullname": "Spongebob Squarepants"},
    ...         {"name": "sandy", "fullname": "Sandy Cheeks"},
    ...         {"name": "patrick", "fullname": "Patrick Star"},
    ...         {"name": "squidward", "fullname": "Squidward Tentacles"},
    ...         {"name": "ehkrabs", "fullname": "Eugene H. Krabs"},
    ...     ],
    ... )
    >>> print(users.all())
    [User(name='spongebob', fullname='Spongebob Squarepants'),
     User(name='sandy', fullname='Sandy Cheeks'),
     User(name='patrick', fullname='Patrick Star'),
     User(name='squidward', fullname='Squidward Tentacles'),
     User(name='ehkrabs', fullname='Eugene H. Krabs')]

RETURNING is supported for all of these use cases, where the ORM will construct a full result set from multiple statement invocations.

See also

ORM Bulk INSERT Statements

### Bulk UPDATE

In a similar manner as that of `Insert`, passing the `Update` construct along with a parameter list that includes primary key values to `Session.execute()` will invoke the same process as previously supported by the `Session.bulk_update_mappings()` method. This feature does not however support RETURNING, as it uses a SQL UPDATE statement that is invoked using DBAPI executemany:

    >>> from sqlalchemy import update
    >>> session.execute(
    ...     update(User),
    ...     [
    ...         {"id": 1, "fullname": "Spongebob Squarepants"},
    ...         {"id": 3, "fullname": "Patrick Star"},
    ...     ],
    ... )

See also

ORM Bulk UPDATE by Primary Key

### INSERT / upsert … VALUES … RETURNING

When using `Insert` with `Insert.values()`, the set of parameters may include SQL expressions. Additionally, upsert variants such as those for SQLite, PostgreSQL and MariaDB are also supported. These statements may now include `Insert.returning()` clauses with column expressions or full ORM entities:

    >>> from sqlalchemy.dialects.sqlite import insert as sqlite_upsert
    >>> stmt = sqlite_upsert(User).values(
    ...     [
    ...         {"name": "spongebob", "fullname": "Spongebob Squarepants"},
    ...         {"name": "sandy", "fullname": "Sandy Cheeks"},
    ...         {"name": "patrick", "fullname": "Patrick Star"},
    ...         {"name": "squidward", "fullname": "Squidward Tentacles"},
    ...         {"name": "ehkrabs", "fullname": "Eugene H. Krabs"},
    ...     ]
    ... )
    >>> stmt = stmt.on_conflict_do_update(
    ...     index_elements=[User.name], set_=dict(fullname=stmt.excluded.fullname)
    ... )
    >>> result = session.scalars(stmt.returning(User))
    >>> print(result.all())
    [User(name='spongebob', fullname='Spongebob Squarepants'),
    User(name='sandy', fullname='Sandy Cheeks'),
    User(name='patrick', fullname='Patrick Star'),
    User(name='squidward', fullname='Squidward Tentacles'),
    User(name='ehkrabs', fullname='Eugene H. Krabs')]

See also

ORM Bulk Insert with Per Row SQL Expressions

ORM “upsert” Statements

### ORM UPDATE / DELETE with WHERE … RETURNING

SQLAlchemy 1.4 also had some modest support for the RETURNING feature to be used with the `update()` and `delete()` constructs, when used with `Session.execute()`. This support has now been upgraded to be fully native, including that the `fetch` synchronization strategy may also proceed whether or not explicit use of RETURNING is present:

    >>> from sqlalchemy import update
    >>> stmt = (
    ...     update(User)
    ...     .where(User.name == "squidward")
    ...     .values(name="spongebob")
    ...     .returning(User)
    ... )
    >>> result = session.scalars(stmt, execution_options={"synchronize_session": "fetch"})
    >>> print(result.all())

See also

ORM UPDATE and DELETE with Custom WHERE Criteria

Using RETURNING with UPDATE/DELETE and Custom WHERE Criteria

### Improved `synchronize_session` behavior for ORM UPDATE / DELETE

The default strategy for synchronize_session is now a new value `"auto"`. This strategy will attempt to use the `"evaluate"` strategy and then automatically fall back to the `"fetch"` strategy. For all backends other than MySQL / MariaDB, `"fetch"` uses RETURNING to fetch UPDATE/DELETEd primary key identifiers within the same statement, so is generally more efficient than previous versions (in 1.4, RETURNING was only available for PostgreSQL, SQL Server).

See also

Selecting a Synchronization Strategy

### Summary of Changes

Listed tickets for new ORM DML with RETURNING features:

- convert `insert()` at ORM level to interpret `values()` in an ORM context - #7864

- evaluate feasibility of dml.returning(Entity) to deliver ORM expressions, automatically apply select().from_statement equiv - #7865

- given ORM insert, try to carry the bulk methods along, re: inheritance - #8360

## New “Write Only” relationship strategy supersedes “dynamic”

The `lazy="dynamic"` loader strategy becomes legacy, in that it is hardcoded to make use of legacy `Query`. This loader strategy is both not compatible with asyncio, and additionally has many behaviors that implicitly iterate its contents, which defeat the original purpose of the “dynamic” relationship as being for very large collections that should not be implicitly fully loaded into memory at any time.

The “dynamic” strategy is now superseded by a new strategy `lazy="write_only"`. Configuration of “write only” may be achieved using the `relationship.lazy` parameter of `relationship()`, or when using type annotated mappings, indicating the `WriteOnlyMapped` annotation as the mapping style:

    from sqlalchemy.orm import WriteOnlyMapped

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        pass

    class Account(Base):
        __tablename__ = "account"
        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
        identifier: Mapped[str]
        account_transactions: WriteOnlyMapped["AccountTransaction"] = relationship(
            cascade="all, delete-orphan",
            passive_deletes=True,
            order_by="AccountTransaction.timestamp",
        )

    class AccountTransaction(Base):
        __tablename__ = "account_transaction"
        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
        account_id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(
            ForeignKey("account.id", ondelete="cascade")
        )
        description: Mapped[str]
        amount: Mapped[Decimal]
        timestamp: Mapped[datetime] = mapped_column(default=func.now())

The write-only-mapped collection resembles `lazy="dynamic"` in that the collection may be assigned up front, and also has methods such as `WriteOnlyCollection.add()` and `WriteOnlyCollection.remove()` to modify the collection on an individual item basis:

    new_account = Account(
        identifier="account_01",
        account_transactions=[
            AccountTransaction(description="initial deposit", amount=Decimal("500.00")),
            AccountTransaction(description="transfer", amount=Decimal("1000.00")),
            AccountTransaction(description="withdrawal", amount=Decimal("-29.50")),
        ],
    )

    new_account.account_transactions.add(
        AccountTransaction(description="transfer", amount=Decimal("2000.00"))
    )

The bigger difference is on the database loading side, where the collection has no ability to load objects from the database directly; instead, SQL construction methods such as `WriteOnlyCollection.select()` are used to produce SQL constructs such as `Select` which are then executed using 2.0 style to load the desired objects in an explicit way:

    account_transactions = session.scalars(
        existing_account.account_transactions.select()
        .where(AccountTransaction.amount < 0)
        .limit(10)
    ).all()

The `WriteOnlyCollection` also integrates with the new ORM bulk dml features, including support for bulk INSERT and UPDATE/DELETE with WHERE criteria, all including RETURNING support as well. See the complete documentation at Write Only Relationships.

See also

Write Only Relationships

### New pep-484 / type annotated mapping support for Dynamic Relationships

Even though “dynamic” relationships are legacy in 2.0, as these patterns are expected to have a long lifespan, type annotated mapping support is now added for “dynamic” relationships in the same way that its available for the new `lazy="write_only"` approach, using the `DynamicMapped` annotation:

    from sqlalchemy.orm import DynamicMapped

    class Base(DeclarativeBase):
        pass

    class Account(Base):
        __tablename__ = "account"
        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
        identifier: Mapped[str]
        account_transactions: DynamicMapped["AccountTransaction"] = relationship(
            cascade="all, delete-orphan",
            passive_deletes=True,
            order_by="AccountTransaction.timestamp",
        )

    class AccountTransaction(Base):
        __tablename__ = "account_transaction"
        id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(primary_key=True)
        account_id: Mapped[int] = mapped_column(
            ForeignKey("account.id", ondelete="cascade")
        )
        description: Mapped[str]
        amount: Mapped[Decimal]
        timestamp: Mapped[datetime] = mapped_column(default=func.now())

The above mapping will provide an `Account.account_transactions` collection that is typed as returning the `AppenderQuery` collection type, including its element type, e.g. `AppenderQuery[AccountTransaction]`. This then allows iteration and queries to yield objects which are typed as `AccountTransaction`.

See also

Dynamic Relationship Loaders

#7123

## Installation is now fully pep-517 enabled

The source distribution now includes a `pyproject.toml` file to allow for complete PEP 517 support. In particular this allows a local source build using `pip` to automatically install the Cython optional dependency.

#7311

## C Extensions now ported to Cython

The SQLAlchemy C extensions have been replaced with all new extensions written in Cython. While Cython was evaluated back in 2010 when the C extensions were first created, the nature and focus of the C extensions in use today has changed quite a bit from that time. At the same time, Cython has apparently evolved significantly, as has the Python build / distribution toolchain which made it feasible for us to revisit it.

The move to Cython provides dramatic new advantages with no apparent downsides:

- The Cython extensions that replace specific C extensions have all benchmarked as faster, often slightly, but sometimes significantly, than virtually all the C code that SQLAlchemy previously included. While this seems amazing, it appears to be a product of non-obvious optimizations within Cython’s implementation that would not be present in a direct Python to C port of a function, as was particularly the case for many of the custom collection types added to the C extensions.

- Cython extensions are much easier to write, maintain and debug compared to raw C code, and in most cases are line-per-line equivalent to the Python code. It is expected that many more elements of SQLAlchemy will be ported to Cython in the coming releases which should open many new doors to performance improvements that were previously out of reach.

- Cython is very mature and widely used, including being the basis of some of the prominent database drivers supported by SQLAlchemy including `asyncpg`, `psycopg3` and `asyncmy`.

Like the previous C extensions, the Cython extensions are pre-built within SQLAlchemy’s wheel distributions which are automatically available to `pip` from PyPi. Manual build instructions are also unchanged with the exception of the Cython requirement.

See also

Building the Cython Extensions

#7256

## Major Architectural, Performance and API Enhancements for Database Reflection

The internal system by which `Table` objects and their components are reflected has been completely rearchitected to allow high performance bulk reflection of thousands of tables at once for participating dialects. Currently, the PostgreSQL and Oracle dialects participate in the new architecture, where the PostgreSQL dialect can now reflect a large series of `Table` objects nearly three times faster, and the Oracle dialect can now reflect a large series of `Table` objects ten times faster.

The rearchitecture applies most directly to dialects that make use of SELECT queries against system catalog tables to reflect tables, and the remaining included dialect that can benefit from this approach will be the SQL Server dialect. The MySQL/MariaDB and SQLite dialects by contrast make use of non-relational systems to reflect database tables, and were not subject to a pre-existing performance issue.

The new API is backwards compatible with the previous system, and should require no changes to third party dialects to retain compatibility; third party dialects can also opt into the new system by implementing batched queries for schema reflection.

Along with this change, the API and behavior of the `Inspector` object has been improved and enhanced with more consistent cross-dialect behaviors as well as new methods and new performance features.

### Performance Overview

The source distribution includes a script `test/perf/many_table_reflection.py` which benches both existing reflection features as well as new ones. A limited set of its tests may be run on older versions of SQLAlchemy, where here we use it to illustrate differences in performance to invoke `metadata.reflect()` to reflect 250 `Table` objects at once over a local network connection:

Dialect | Operation | SQLA 1.4 Time (secs) | SQLA 2.0 Time (secs)
postgresql+psycopg2 | `metadata.reflect()`, 250 tables | 8.2 | 3.3
oracle+cx_oracle | `metadata.reflect()`, 250 tables | 60.4 | 6.8

### Behavioral Changes for `Inspector()`

For SQLAlchemy-included dialects for SQLite, PostgreSQL, MySQL/MariaDB, Oracle, and SQL Server, the `Inspector.has_table()`, `Inspector.has_sequence()`, `Inspector.has_index()`, `Inspector.get_table_names()` and `Inspector.get_sequence_names()` now all behave consistently in terms of caching: they all fully cache their result after being called the first time for a particular `Inspector` object. Programs that create or drop tables/sequences while calling upon the same `Inspector` object will not receive updated status after the state of the database has changed. A call to `Inspector.clear_cache()` or a new `Inspector` should be used when DDL changes are to be executed. Previously, the `Inspector.has_table()`, `Inspector.has_sequence()` methods did not implement caching nor did the `Inspector` support caching for these methods, while the `Inspector.get_table_names()` and `Inspector.get_sequence_names()` methods were, leading to inconsistent results between the two types of method.

Behavior for third party dialects is dependent on whether or not they implement the “reflection cache” decorator for the dialect-level implementation of these methods.

### New Methods and Improvements for `Inspector()`

- added a method `Inspector.has_schema()` that returns if a schema is present in the target database

- added a method `Inspector.has_index()` that returns if a table has a particular index.

- Inspection methods such as `Inspector.get_columns()` that work on a single table at a time should now all consistently raise `NoSuchTableError` if a table or view is not found; this change is specific to individual dialects, so may not be the case for existing third-party dialects.

- Separated the handling of “views” and “materialized views”, as in real world use cases, these two constructs make use of different DDL for CREATE and DROP; this includes that there are now separate `Inspector.get_view_names()` and `Inspector.get_materialized_view_names()` methods.

#4379

## Dialect support for psycopg 3 (a.k.a. “psycopg”)

Added dialect support for the psycopg 3 DBAPI, which despite the number “3” now goes by the package name `psycopg`, superseding the previous `psycopg2` package that for the time being remains SQLAlchemy’s “default” driver for the `postgresql` dialects. `psycopg` is a completely reworked and modernized database adapter for PostgreSQL which supports concepts such as prepared statements as well as Python asyncio.

`psycopg` is the first DBAPI supported by SQLAlchemy which provides both a pep-249 synchronous API as well as an asyncio driver. The same `psycopg` database URL may be used with the `create_engine()` and `create_async_engine()` engine-creation functions, and the corresponding sync or asyncio version of the dialect will be selected automatically.

See also

psycopg

## Dialect support for oracledb

Added dialect support for the oracledb DBAPI, which is the renamed, new major release of the popular cx_Oracle driver.

See also

python-oracledb

## New Conditional DDL for Constraints and Indexes

A new method `Constraint.ddl_if()` and `Index.ddl_if()` allows constructs such as `CheckConstraint`, `UniqueConstraint` and `Index` to be rendered conditionally for a given `Table`, based on the same kinds of criteria that are accepted by the `DDLElement.execute_if()` method. In the example below, the CHECK constraint and index will only be produced against a PostgreSQL backend:

    meta = MetaData()

    my_table = Table(
        "my_table",
        meta,
        Column("id", Integer, primary_key=True),
        Column("num", Integer),
        Column("data", String),
        Index("my_pg_index", "data").ddl_if(dialect="postgresql"),
        CheckConstraint("num > 5").ddl_if(dialect="postgresql"),
    )

    e1 = create_engine("sqlite://", echo=True)
    meta.create_all(e1)  # will not generate CHECK and INDEX

    e2 = create_engine("postgresql://scott:tiger@localhost/test", echo=True)
    meta.create_all(e2)  # will generate CHECK and INDEX

See also

Controlling DDL Generation of Constraints and Indexes

#7631

## DATE, TIME, DATETIME datatypes now support literal rendering on all backends

Literal rendering is now implemented for date and time types for backend specific compilation, including PostgreSQL and Oracle:

    >>> import datetime

    >>> from sqlalchemy import DATETIME
    >>> from sqlalchemy import literal
    >>> from sqlalchemy.dialects import oracle
    >>> from sqlalchemy.dialects import postgresql

    >>> date_literal = literal(datetime.datetime.now(), DATETIME)

    >>> print(
    ...     date_literal.compile(
    ...         dialect=postgresql.dialect(), compile_kwargs={"literal_binds": True}
    ...     )
    ... )
    '2022-12-17 11:02:13.575789'
    >>> print(
    ...     date_literal.compile(
    ...         dialect=oracle.dialect(), compile_kwargs={"literal_binds": True}
    ...     )
    ... )
    TO_TIMESTAMP('2022-12-17 11:02:13.575789', 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS.FF')

Previously, such literal rendering only worked when stringifying statements without any dialect given; when attempting to render with a dialect-specific type, a `NotImplementedError` would be raised, up until SQLAlchemy 1.4.45 where this became a `CompileError` (part of #8800).

The default rendering is modified ISO-8601 rendering (i.e. ISO-8601 with the T converted to a space) when using `literal_binds` with the SQL compilers provided by the PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, MSSQL, Oracle dialects. For Oracle, the ISO format is wrapped inside of an appropriate TO_DATE() function call. The rendering for SQLite is unchanged as this dialect always included string rendering for date values.

#5052

## Context Manager Support for `Result`, `AsyncResult`

The `Result` object now supports context manager use, which will ensure the object and its underlying cursor is closed at the end of the block. This is useful in particular with server side cursors, where it’s important that the open cursor object is closed at the end of an operation, even if user-defined exceptions have occurred:

    with engine.connect() as conn:
        with conn.execution_options(yield_per=100).execute(
            text("select * from table")
        ) as result:
            for row in result:
                print(f"{row}")

With asyncio use, the `AsyncResult` and `AsyncConnection` have been altered to provide for optional async context manager use, as in:

    async with async_engine.connect() as conn:
        async with conn.execution_options(yield_per=100).execute(
            text("select * from table")
        ) as result:
            for row in result:
                print(f"{row}")

#8710

## Behavioral Changes

This section covers behavioral changes made in SQLAlchemy 2.0 which are not otherwise part of the major 1.4->2.0 migration path; changes here are not expected to have significant effects on backwards compatibility.

### New transaction join modes for `Session`

The behavior of “joining an external transaction into a Session” has been revised and improved, allowing explicit control over how the `Session` will accommodate an incoming `Connection` that already has a transaction and possibly a savepoint already established. The new parameter `Session.join_transaction_mode` includes a series of option values which can accommodate the existing transaction in several ways, most importantly allowing a `Session` to operate in a fully transactional style using savepoints exclusively, while leaving the externally initiated transaction non-committed and active under all circumstances, allowing test suites to rollback all changes that take place within tests.

The primary improvement this allows is that the recipe documented at Joining a Session into an External Transaction (such as for test suites), which also changed from SQLAlchemy 1.3 to 1.4, is now simplified to no longer require explicit use of an event handler or any mention of an explicit savepoint; by using `join_transaction_mode="create_savepoint"`, the `Session` will never affect the state of an incoming transaction, and will instead create a savepoint (i.e. “nested transaction”) as its root transaction.

The following illustrates part of the example given at Joining a Session into an External Transaction (such as for test suites); see that section for a full example:

    class SomeTest(TestCase):
        def setUp(self):
            # connect to the database
            self.connection = engine.connect()

            # begin a non-ORM transaction
            self.trans = self.connection.begin()

            # bind an individual Session to the connection, selecting
            # "create_savepoint" join_transaction_mode
            self.session = Session(
                bind=self.connection, join_transaction_mode="create_savepoint"
            )

        def tearDown(self):
            self.session.close()

            # rollback non-ORM transaction
            self.trans.rollback()

            # return connection to the Engine
            self.connection.close()

The default mode selected for `Session.join_transaction_mode` is `"conditional_savepoint"`, which uses `"create_savepoint"` behavior if the given `Connection` is itself already on a savepoint. If the given `Connection` is in a transaction but not a savepoint, the `Session` will propagate “rollback” calls but not “commit” calls, but will not begin a new savepoint on its own. This behavior is chosen by default for its maximum compatibility with older SQLAlchemy versions as well as that it does not start a new SAVEPOINT unless the given driver is already making use of SAVEPOINT, as support for SAVEPOINT varies not only with specific backend and driver but also configurationally.

The following illustrates a case that worked in SQLAlchemy 1.3, stopped working in SQLAlchemy 1.4, and is now restored in SQLAlchemy 2.0:

    engine = create_engine("...")

    # setup outer connection with a transaction and a SAVEPOINT
    conn = engine.connect()
    trans = conn.begin()
    nested = conn.begin_nested()

    # bind a Session to that connection and operate upon it, including
    # a commit
    session = Session(conn)
    session.connection()
    session.commit()
    session.close()

    # assert both SAVEPOINT and transaction remain active
    assert nested.is_active
    nested.rollback()
    trans.rollback()

Where above, a `Session` is joined to a `Connection` that has a savepoint started on it; the state of these two units remains unchanged after the `Session` has worked with the transaction. In SQLAlchemy 1.3, the above case worked because the `Session` would begin a “subtransaction” upon the `Connection`, which would allow the outer savepoint / transaction to remain unaffected for simple cases as above. Since subtransactions were deprecated in 1.4 and are now removed in 2.0, this behavior was no longer available. The new default behavior improves upon the behavior of “subtransactions” by using a real, second SAVEPOINT instead, so that even calls to `Session.rollback()` prevent the `Session` from “breaking out” into the externally initiated SAVEPOINT or transaction.

New code that is joining a transaction-started `Connection` into a `Session` should however select a `Session.join_transaction_mode` explicitly, so that the desired behavior is explicitly defined.

#9015

### `str(engine.url)` will obfuscate the password by default

To avoid leakage of database passwords, calling `str()` on a `URL` will now enable the password obfuscation feature by default. Previously, this obfuscation would be in place for `__repr__()` calls but not `__str__()`. This change will impact applications and test suites that attempt to invoke `create_engine()` given the stringified URL from another engine, such as:

    >>> e1 = create_engine("postgresql+psycopg2://scott:tiger@localhost/test")
    >>> e2 = create_engine(str(e1.url))

The above engine `e2` will not have the correct password; it will have the obfuscated string `"***"`.

The preferred approach for the above pattern is to pass the `URL` object directly, there’s no need to stringify:

    >>> e1 = create_engine("postgresql+psycopg2://scott:tiger@localhost/test")
    >>> e2 = create_engine(e1.url)

Otherwise, for a stringified URL with cleartext password, use the `URL.render_as_string()` method, passing the `URL.render_as_string.hide_password` parameter as `False`:

    >>> e1 = create_engine("postgresql+psycopg2://scott:tiger@localhost/test")
    >>> url_string = e1.url.render_as_string(hide_password=False)
    >>> e2 = create_engine(url_string)

#8567

### Stricter rules for replacement of Columns in Table objects with same-names, keys

Stricter rules are in place for appending of `Column` objects to `Table` objects, both moving some previous deprecation warnings to exceptions, and preventing some previous scenarios that would cause duplicate columns to appear in tables, when `Table.extend_existing` were set to `True`, for both programmatic `Table` construction as well as during reflection operations.

- Under no circumstances should a `Table` object ever have two or more `Column` objects with the same name, regardless of what .key they have. An edge case where this was still possible was identified and fixed.

- Adding a `Column` to a `Table` that has the same name or key as an existing `Column` will always raise `DuplicateColumnError` (a new subclass of `ArgumentError` in 2.0.0b4) unless additional parameters are present; `Table.append_column.replace_existing` for `Table.append_column()`, and `Table.extend_existing` for construction of a same-named `Table` as an existing one, with or without reflection being used. Previously, there was a deprecation warning in place for this scenario.

- A warning is now emitted if a `Table` is created, that does include `Table.extend_existing`, where an incoming `Column` that has no separate `Column.key` would fully replace an existing `Column` that does have a key, which suggests the operation is not what the user intended. This can happen particularly during a secondary reflection step, such as `metadata.reflect(extend_existing=True)`. The warning suggests that the `Table.autoload_replace` parameter be set to `False` to prevent this. Previously, in 1.4 and earlier, the incoming column would be added in addition to the existing column. This was a bug and is a behavioral change in 2.0 (as of 2.0.0b4), as the previous key will no longer be present in the column collection when this occurs.

#8925

### ORM Declarative Applies Column Orders Differently; Control behavior using `sort_order`

Declarative has changed the system by which mapped columns that originate from mixin or abstract base classes are sorted along with the columns that are on the declared class itself to place columns from the declared class first, followed by mixin columns. The following mapping:

    class Foo:
        col1 = mapped_column(Integer)
        col3 = mapped_column(Integer)

    class Bar:
        col2 = mapped_column(Integer)
        col4 = mapped_column(Integer)

    class Model(Base, Foo, Bar):
        id = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        __tablename__ = "model"

Produces a CREATE TABLE as follows on 1.4:

    CREATE TABLE model (
      col1 INTEGER,
      col3 INTEGER,
      col2 INTEGER,
      col4 INTEGER,
      id INTEGER NOT NULL,
      PRIMARY KEY (id)
    )

Whereas on 2.0 it produces:

    CREATE TABLE model (
      id INTEGER NOT NULL,
      col1 INTEGER,
      col3 INTEGER,
      col2 INTEGER,
      col4 INTEGER,
      PRIMARY KEY (id)
    )

For the specific case above, this can be seen as an improvement, as the primary key columns on the `Model` are now where one would typically prefer. However, this is no comfort for the application that defined models the other way around, as:

    class Foo:
        id = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True)
        col1 = mapped_column(Integer)
        col3 = mapped_column(Integer)

    class Model(Foo, Base):
        col2 = mapped_column(Integer)
        col4 = mapped_column(Integer)
        __tablename__ = "model"

This now produces CREATE TABLE output as:

    CREATE TABLE model (
      col2 INTEGER,
      col4 INTEGER,
      id INTEGER NOT NULL,
      col1 INTEGER,
      col3 INTEGER,
      PRIMARY KEY (id)
    )

To solve this issue, SQLAlchemy 2.0.4 introduces a new parameter on `mapped_column()` called `mapped_column.sort_order`, which is an integer value, defaulting to `0`, that can be set to a positive or negative value so that columns are placed before or after other columns, as in the example below:

    class Foo:
        id = mapped_column(Integer, primary_key=True, sort_order=-10)
        col1 = mapped_column(Integer, sort_order=-1)
        col3 = mapped_column(Integer)

    class Model(Foo, Base):
        col2 = mapped_column(Integer)
        col4 = mapped_column(Integer)
        __tablename__ = "model"

The above model places “id” before all others and “col1” after “id”:

    CREATE TABLE model (
      id INTEGER NOT NULL,
      col1 INTEGER,
      col2 INTEGER,
      col4 INTEGER,
      col3 INTEGER,
      PRIMARY KEY (id)
    )

Future SQLAlchemy releases may opt to provide an explicit ordering hint for the `mapped_column` construct, as this ordering is ORM specific.

### The `Sequence` construct reverts to not having any explicit default “start” value; impacts MS SQL Server

Prior to SQLAlchemy 1.4, the `Sequence` construct would emit only simple `CREATE SEQUENCE` DDL, if no additional arguments were specified:

    >>> # SQLAlchemy 1.3 (and 2.0)
    >>> from sqlalchemy import Sequence
    >>> from sqlalchemy.schema import CreateSequence
    >>> print(CreateSequence(Sequence("my_seq")))
    CREATE SEQUENCE my_seq

However, as `Sequence` support was added for MS SQL Server, where the default start value is inconveniently set to `-2**63`, version 1.4 decided to default the DDL to emit a start value of 1, if `Sequence.start` were not otherwise provided:

    >>> # SQLAlchemy 1.4 (only)
    >>> from sqlalchemy import Sequence
    >>> from sqlalchemy.schema import CreateSequence
    >>> print(CreateSequence(Sequence("my_seq")))
    CREATE SEQUENCE my_seq START WITH 1

This change has introduced other complexities, including that when the `Sequence.min_value` parameter is included, this default of `1` should in fact default to what `Sequence.min_value` states, else a min_value that’s below the start_value may be seen as contradictory. As looking at this issue started to become a bit of a rabbit hole of other various edge cases, we decided to instead revert this change and restore the original behavior of `Sequence` which is to have no opinion, and just emit CREATE SEQUENCE, allowing the database itself to make its decisions on how the various parameters of `SEQUENCE` should interact with each other.

Therefore, to ensure that the start value is 1 on all backends, the start value of 1 may be indicated explicitly, as below:

    >>> # All SQLAlchemy versions
    >>> from sqlalchemy import Sequence
    >>> from sqlalchemy.schema import CreateSequence
    >>> print(CreateSequence(Sequence("my_seq", start=1)))
    CREATE SEQUENCE my_seq START WITH 1

Beyond all of that, for autogeneration of integer primary keys on modern backends including PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, the `Identity` construct should be preferred, which also works the same way in 1.4 and 2.0 with no changes in behavior.

#7211

### “with_variant()” clones the original TypeEngine rather than changing the type

The `TypeEngine.with_variant()` method, which is used to apply alternate per-database behaviors to a particular type, now returns a copy of the original `TypeEngine` object with the variant information stored internally, rather than wrapping it inside the `Variant` class.

While the previous `Variant` approach was able to maintain all the in-Python behaviors of the original type using dynamic attribute getters, the improvement here is that when calling upon a variant, the returned type remains an instance of the original type, which works more smoothly with type checkers such as mypy and pylance. Given a program as below:

    import typing

    from sqlalchemy import String
    from sqlalchemy.dialects.mysql import VARCHAR

    type_ = String(255).with_variant(VARCHAR(255, charset="utf8mb4"), "mysql", "mariadb")

    if typing.TYPE_CHECKING:
        reveal_type(type_)

A type checker like pyright will now report the type as:

    info: Type of "type_" is "String"

In addition, as illustrated above, multiple dialect names may be passed for single type, in particular this is helpful for the pair of `"mysql"` and `"mariadb"` dialects which are considered separately as of SQLAlchemy 1.4.

#6980

### Python division operator performs true division for all backends; added floor division

The Core expression language now supports both “true division” (i.e. the `/` Python operator) and “floor division” (i.e. the `//` Python operator) including backend-specific behaviors to normalize different databases in this regard.

Given a “true division” operation against two integer values:

    expr = literal(5, Integer) / literal(10, Integer)

The SQL division operator on PostgreSQL for example normally acts as “floor division” when used against integers, meaning the above result would return the integer “0”. For this and similar backends, SQLAlchemy now renders the SQL using a form which is equivalent towards:

    %(param_1)s / CAST(%(param_2)s AS NUMERIC)

With `param_1=5`, `param_2=10`, so that the return expression will be of type NUMERIC, typically as the Python value `decimal.Decimal("0.5")`.

Given a “floor division” operation against two integer values:

    expr = literal(5, Integer) // literal(10, Integer)

The SQL division operator on MySQL and Oracle for example normally acts as “true division” when used against integers, meaning the above result would return the floating point value “0.5”. For these and similar backends, SQLAlchemy now renders the SQL using a form which is equivalent towards:

    FLOOR(%(param_1)s / %(param_2)s)

With param_1=5, param_2=10, so that the return expression will be of type INTEGER, as the Python value `0`.

The backwards-incompatible change here would be if an application using PostgreSQL, SQL Server, or SQLite which relied on the Python “truediv” operator to return an integer value in all cases. Applications which rely upon this behavior should instead use the Python “floor division” operator `//` for these operations, or for forwards compatibility when using a previous SQLAlchemy version, the floor function:

    expr = func.floor(literal(5, Integer) / literal(10, Integer))

The above form would be needed on any SQLAlchemy version prior to 2.0 in order to provide backend-agnostic floor division.

#4926

### Session raises proactively when illegal concurrent or reentrant access is detected

The `Session` can now trap more errors related to illegal concurrent state changes within multithreaded or other concurrent scenarios as well as for event hooks which perform unexpected state changes.

One error that’s been known to occur when a `Session` is used in multiple threads simultaneously is `AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'twophase'`, which is completely cryptic. This error occurs when a thread calls `Session.commit()` which internally invokes the `SessionTransaction.close()` method to end the transactional context, at the same time that another thread is in progress running a query as from `Session.execute()`. Within `Session.execute()`, the internal method that acquires a database connection for the current transaction first begins by asserting that the session is “active”, but after this assertion passes, the concurrent call to `Session.close()` interferes with this state which leads to the undefined condition above.

The change applies guards to all state-changing methods surrounding the `SessionTransaction` object so that in the above case, the `Session.commit()` method will instead fail as it will seek to change the state to one that is disallowed for the duration of the already-in-progress method that wants to get the current connection to run a database query.

Using the test script illustrated at #7433, the previous error case looks like:

    Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/home/classic/dev/sqlalchemy/test3.py", line 30, in worker
        sess.execute(select(A)).all()
    File "/home/classic/tmp/sqlalchemy/lib/sqlalchemy/orm/session.py", line 1691, in execute
        conn = self._connection_for_bind(bind)
    File "/home/classic/tmp/sqlalchemy/lib/sqlalchemy/orm/session.py", line 1532, in _connection_for_bind
        return self._transaction._connection_for_bind(
    File "/home/classic/tmp/sqlalchemy/lib/sqlalchemy/orm/session.py", line 754, in _connection_for_bind
        if self.session.twophase and self._parent is None:
    AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'twophase'

Where the `_connection_for_bind()` method isn’t able to continue since concurrent access placed it into an invalid state. Using the new approach, the originator of the state change throws the error instead:

    File "/home/classic/dev/sqlalchemy/lib/sqlalchemy/orm/session.py", line 1785, in close
       self._close_impl(invalidate=False)
    File "/home/classic/dev/sqlalchemy/lib/sqlalchemy/orm/session.py", line 1827, in _close_impl
       transaction.close(invalidate)
    File "<string>", line 2, in close
    File "/home/classic/dev/sqlalchemy/lib/sqlalchemy/orm/session.py", line 506, in _go
       raise sa_exc.InvalidRequestError(
    sqlalchemy.exc.InvalidRequestError: Method 'close()' can't be called here;
    method '_connection_for_bind()' is already in progress and this would cause
    an unexpected state change to symbol('CLOSED')

The state transition checks intentionally don’t use explicit locks to detect concurrent thread activity, instead relying upon simple attribute set / value test operations that inherently fail when unexpected concurrent changes occur. The rationale is that the approach can detect illegal state changes that occur entirely within a single thread, such as an event handler that runs on session transaction events calls a state-changing method that’s not expected, or under asyncio if a particular `Session` were shared among multiple asyncio tasks, as well as when using patching-style concurrency approaches such as gevent.

#7433

### The SQLite dialect uses QueuePool for file-based databases

The SQLite dialect now defaults to `QueuePool` when a file based database is used. This is set along with setting the `check_same_thread` parameter to `False`. It has been observed that the previous approach of defaulting to `NullPool`, which does not hold onto database connections after they are released, did in fact have a measurable negative performance impact. As always, the pool class is customizable via the `create_engine.poolclass` parameter.

See also

Threading/Pooling Behavior

#7490

### New Oracle FLOAT type with binary precision; decimal precision not accepted directly

A new datatype `FLOAT` has been added to the Oracle dialect, to accompany the addition of `Double` and database-specific `DOUBLE`, `DOUBLE_PRECISION` and `REAL` datatypes. Oracle’s `FLOAT` accepts a so-called “binary precision” parameter that per Oracle documentation is roughly a standard “precision” value divided by 0.3103:

    from sqlalchemy.dialects import oracle

    Table("some_table", metadata, Column("value", oracle.FLOAT(126)))

A binary precision value of 126 is synonymous with using the `DOUBLE_PRECISION` datatype, and a value of 63 is equivalent to using the `REAL` datatype. Other precision values are specific to the `FLOAT` type itself.

The SQLAlchemy `Float` datatype also accepts a “precision” parameter, but this is decimal precision which is not accepted by Oracle. Rather than attempting to guess the conversion, the Oracle dialect will now raise an informative error if `Float` is used with a precision value against the Oracle backend. To specify a `Float` datatype with an explicit precision value for supporting backends, while also supporting other backends, use the `TypeEngine.with_variant()` method as follows:

    from sqlalchemy.types import Float
    from sqlalchemy.dialects import oracle

    Table(
        "some_table",
        metadata,
        Column("value", Float(5).with_variant(oracle.FLOAT(16), "oracle")),
    )

### New RANGE / MULTIRANGE support and changes for PostgreSQL backends

RANGE / MULTIRANGE support has been fully implemented for psycopg2, psycopg3, and asyncpg dialects. The new support uses a new SQLAlchemy-specific `Range` object that is agnostic of the different backends and does not require the use of backend-specific imports or extension steps. For multirange support, lists of `Range` objects are used.

Code that used the previous psycopg2-specific types should be modified to use `Range`, which presents a compatible interface.

The `Range` object also features comparison support which mirrors that of PostgreSQL. Implemented so far are `Range.contains()` and `Range.contained_by()` methods which work in the same way as the PostgreSQL `@>` and `<@`. Additional operator support may be added in future releases.

See the documentation at Range and Multirange Types for background on using the new feature.

See also

Range and Multirange Types

#7156 #8706

### `match()` operator on PostgreSQL uses `plainto_tsquery()` rather than `to_tsquery()`

The `Operators.match()` function now renders `col @@ plainto_tsquery(expr)` on the PostgreSQL backend, rather than `col @@ to_tsquery()`. `plainto_tsquery()` accepts plain text whereas `to_tsquery()` accepts specialized query symbols, and is therefore less cross-compatible with other backends.

All PostgreSQL search functions and operators are available through use of `func` to generate PostgreSQL-specific functions and `Operators.bool_op()` (a boolean-typed version of `Operators.op()`) to generate arbitrary operators, in the same manner as they are available in previous versions. See the examples at Full Text Search.

Existing SQLAlchemy projects that make use of PG-specific directives within `Operators.match()` should make use of `func.to_tsquery()` directly. To render SQL in exactly the same form as would be present in 1.4, see the version note at Simple plain text matching with match().

#7086