Mastering Relational Databases in Python: From Psycopg2 to SQLAlchemy with a Real Project

📜 Prelude: A Tale of Two Libraries

Once upon a repo in the kingdom of Python, a developer (you!) stood at the crossroads of working with PostgreSQL. Two powerful paths appeared:

• Psycopg2 — the sharp sword of raw SQL, mighty but manual.
• SQLAlchemy — a magical staff, harnessing the arcane arts of ORM.

In this tale, we will walk both paths, one after another, using the Student Enrollment System — a classic yet evergreen RDBMS example.

🏗️ Project: Student Enrollment System

We have three mighty tables:

• students: Stores each learner's details.
• courses: Holds course information.
• enrollments: A bridge table showing who enrolled in what.

Let’s first create this project using psycopg2, then recreate it with SQLAlchemy ORM.

⚙️ Setup

🧱 Install PostgreSQL 16 (already done!)