SQL columns can be referred to either by name or by index. Avoiding positional semantics means using "ORDER BY transaction_date ASC" rather than "ORDER BY 3 AS

SQL columns can be referred to either by name or by index. Avoiding positional semantics means using "ORDER BY transaction_date ASC" rather than "ORDER BY 3 ASC". On the calling code, your python library may return either a tuple or a dictionary. The dictionary is the right way to do it, because then you access parameters by name, and reordering or adding parameters to the query output doesn't break your script.