> It is a standard feature of pysqlite2 (the sqlite3 library shipped with > Python). I am quite sure you can read the documentation just as well as I > can copy and paste it. In short, you can use anything you like as the data > type in sqlite. You could specify that some column contains: > > create table Developers > ( > count sillyGooses integer not null > ); > > You have now defined this to be of type sillyGooses integer. It will have > affinity integer. WHen you read the column metadata you can find out that > count is of type sillygooses and multiply the returned value count by Pi/e if > that is the conversion factor required. > > THe person writing the interface can even do this magically for you -- just > like pysqlite / sqlite3 python libraries do. >
It's hard to tell what you are suggesting without the full example I asked for but given that 1. you are showing a create statement and 2. refering to the "person writing the interface" I assume you are suggesting that the user define the structure of the output table sent from sqlite and do that either on the python or sqlite side but that was what we were trying to avoid. Of course it's possible (and easy to do in R too) if the user is required to specify the output types on the sqlite or R side but in R you don't have to -- it's all done automatically for you. In the full R example I showed there is no create statement or other statements to define an the "interface" that I did not show yet it works in databases that support date types but not in sqlite (unless you rely on heuristics that the sqldf package provides).
