Install the required software

$ easy_install Django==1.0.2-final

To install Django 1.1

$ easy_install Django==1.1

Python SQL Anywhere Database Interface

The SQL Anywhere Database Interface for Python provides a Database API v2 compliant driver (see Python PEP 249) for accessing SQL Anywhere databases from Python. The SQL Anywhere backend for Django is built on top of this interface so installing it is required. You can obtain the Python SQL Anywhere Database Interface from: http://code.google.com/p/sqlanydb Install the driver by extracting the archive and running the following command in the resulting directory:

$ python setup.py install

You should always use the latest version of the Python SQL Anywhere Database Interface that is available. If you wish to use Django 1.1 with SQL Anywhere you must use at least version 1.0.2 of the Python SQL Anywhere Database Interface.

SQL Anywhere Django Backend

You can obtain the SQL Anywhere Database backend for Django from: http://code.google.com/p/sqlany-django Install the backend by extracting the archive and running the following command in the resulting directory:

$ python setup.py install

Setup your environment (Linux/Unix/Mac OS X only)

SQL Anywhere requires several environment variables to be set to run correctly -- the most important of which are PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The SQL Anywhere install creates a file named sa_config.sh to set all necessary environment variables automatically (Note the file is named sa_config.csh if you are using a csh derivative as your shell). This file is located in the "bin32" and/or the "bin64" directories of your install. Before trying to run the SQL Anywhere server or connect to a running server in a given shell you should make sure to source the file (with the "." command) corresponding to the bitness of the SQL Anywhere binaries you want to use. For example, if the product is installed in /opt/sqlanywhere11 you should run:

$ . /opt/sqlanywhere11/bin32/sa_config.sh

Create a database

Issue the following command to create a new database to use with Django. Note that we are specifying the UCA collation so that that CHAR columns in the database will support unicode strings.

$ dbinit -z UCA django.db

If all goes well SQL Anywhere will have created a new database file named 'django.db' in the directory where you ran the dbinit command. Feel free to move this database file to any location you want. You can even copy it to a machine running a different operating system if you wish.

Start the Database Server

SQL Anywhere includes two different database servers -- The personal server (dbeng11) and the network server (dbsrv11). Both servers support the same complete set of features except that the personal server is limited to running on one CPU, allows a maximum of 10 concurrent connections and does not accept network connections from other machines. We will use the network server for our example.

$ dbsrv11 django.db

Configure Django

Creating a new Django site and configuring it to use SQL Anywhere is very easy. First create the site in the normal fashion:

$ django-admin.py startproject mysite

Then edit the file mysite/settings.py and change the DATABASE_* settings to match what is given below:

DATABASE_ENGINE='sqlany_django'
DATABASE_NAME='django' 
DATABASE_USER='dba' 
DATABASE_PASSWORD='sql' 
DATABASE_HOST='' 
DATABASE_PORT='' 
DATABASE_OPTIONS={'eng': 'django'}

Note: SQL Anywhere allows you to run several database servers on one machine. For this reason you should always specify the server you want to connect to as well as the database name. The server name can be specified in the DATABASE_OPTIONS dictionary by using the key "eng". By default, a SQL Anywhere server takes on the name of the first database started so when we start the "django" database as "dbeng11 django.db" both the server and database names will be "django".

Test to make sure everything is working

The SQL Anywhere database backend for Django makes use of the Python SQL Anywhere Database interface. We first want to test that this interface is working correctly before testing Django connectivity itself. Create a file named test_sqlany.py with the following contents:

import sqlanydb 
conn = sqlanydb.connect(uid='dba', pwd='sql', eng='django', dbn='django')
curs = conn.cursor()
curs.execute("select 'Hello, world!'") 
print "SQL Anywhere says: %s" % curs.fetchone()

Run the test script and ensure that you get the expected output:

$ python test_sqlany.py 
SQL Anywhere says: Hello, world!

To test that Django can make use of the SQL Anywhere Database backend simply change to the "mysite" directory created in step 5 and ask Django to create the tables for the default applications.

$ python manage.py syncdb

If you don't receive any errors at this point then congratulations. Django is now correctly configured to use SQL Anywhere as a backend.

What to do if you have problems?

If you run into problems, don't worry. First try re-reading the instructions above and make sure you haven't missed a step. If you are still having issues here are a few resources to help you figure out what went wrong. You can consult the documentation, or post to a forum where many of the SQL Anywhere engineers hang out.

Where to go from here?

SQL Anywhere should now be successfully configured as a backend for your Django site. To learn more about creating web applications with Django try the excellent series of tutorials provided by the Django project.