In case you missed it, here’s Part I.
To make the final jump away from the Excel environment of storing data is to connect the processing power of the Python programming language to a MySQL database.
Note: There were a lot of instructions here for installing MySQLdb, just one of the few ways to accomplish this task. As I have found through upgrading MySQL, this module breaks and will leave your past projects in the dust. In the end, it’s not really even worth the complicated hacks and instructions to get it working. I’ve gone back to this post to offer a better solution: I suggest installing pymysql. It works exactly the same way, and will not give you major headaches.
On another note: If you plan to use Django and MySQL one day, you should make sure to edit your manage.py file accordingly. Django uses MySQLdb and needs to be told not to.
On the Mac, my program of choice to connect to a MySQL server and edit it is Sequel Pro. PostgreSQL support will come some day, in which case migrating away from MySQL may be worth looking into.
In my next entry, I’ll go over manipulating sample data.
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