SQLite Gotcha 2

Creating a table with a column of type INT PRIMARY KEY will not result in automatic assignment of a unique value into that column when new rows are added. Why not? In part because INT is not a type in SQLite (but you can use it and the column will have integer affinity but you have to provide the value) and partly because rowid assignment only occurs on columns defined as INTEGER PRIMARY KEY.

Take a look at the documentation on SQLite data types (http://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html). You may also be surprised to discover that you can declare a column of one type then store data of a different type in it.

SQLite Gotcha

ROWID is a reserved word in SQLite which seems reasonable.. but it has a synonym OID so if you declare a table with a column called OID then select from that table without using the table name as a prefix, you will not get what you expect.

If you are using an ORM to abstract away the database then you may never realise what is going on..

Unicode Gotcha

What will this give you?

>>> astring = None
>>> print unicode(astring)

If you said None then you will be surprised to find the answer is u"None" which is not at all the same thing. Really messed up my day..

Bing Sucks

Bing, the new search engine from Microsoft, sucks. This conclusion is based on one simple test:
Enter "internet search" as your search term and the results do not contain Yahoo, Google, Bing or LiveSearch. Dogpile is the number one hit.

Remove the word internet and now you get Yahoo listed top.

Try the same test on Yahoo and it lists Bing first in a sponsored results box, followed by Yahoo and Google .. and then Dogpile. Huh?