The API also allows a number of different syntaxes for query parameters: question marks, %-style format codes and one or two others as well and support for any

The API also allows a number of different syntaxes for query parameters: question marks, %-style format codes and one or two others as well and support for any particular style is optional. Last time I checked - a few years ago now - the styles supported by MySQLdb and psycopg were disjoint sets. Another wart: there is (or was) different named parameters to use when creating a database connection. One driver would use passwd, another would use password, for example. Those issues aside - and they only bite you if you're using several different databases - I really liked the simplicity of the DB API. Coming from the boilerplate hell that was Java's API it was a godsend.