We will sometimes want to interact with our database and use its results in a specific programming language. E.g. to build web applications or data pipelines in a specific language (Ruby, Python, Javascript, etc.) That’s where DBAPIs come in.

• A DBAPI
  • provides a standard interface for one programming language (like Python) to talk to a relational database server.
  • is a low level library for writing SQL statements that connect to a database
  • is also known as database adapters
• Different DBAPIs exist for every server framework or language + database system
• Database adapters define a standard for using a database (with SQL) and using the results of database queries as input data in the given language.
  • Turn a selected SELECT * FROM some_table; list of rows into an array of objects in Javascript for say a NodeJS adapter; or a list of tuples in Python for a Python adapter.

Example across languages and server frameworks

• For Ruby (e.g. for Sinatra, Ruby on Rails): pg
• For NodeJS: node-postgres
• For Python (e.g. for Flask, Django): pyscopg2