mssql-python provides a straightforward interface to create a new connection to a database by calling the connect() function, which returns an instance of the Connection Class. This Connection class manages all aspects of interacting with the database, including establishing a session with SQL Server, controlling transactions by committing or rolling back changes, and closing the connection when finished.

The connection string traditionally indicates the database server, the specific database to connect to, driver settings, and security details (e.g., Trusted Connection). mssql-python make it very simple to give the connection attributes to connect to the server and database.

Here is an example of the connection string that must be defined within the driver to connect to the SQL Server database:

# Using SQLPassword authentication
conn_str = Server=<your_server_name>;Database=<your_database_name>;UID=<your_user_id>;PWD=<your_password>;Trusted_Connection=yes;Encrypt=yes;TrustServerCertificate=yes;Authentication=<SqlPassword>;

# Using EntraID authentication
conn_str = Server=<your_server_name>;Database=<your_database_name>;Uid=your_user_id@your_domain.com;Encrypt=yes;TrustServerCertificate=yes;Authentication=ActiveDirectoryInteractive;

The following connection string keywords are reserved by the mssql-python driver and cannot be set by the user. If specified, the driver will raise an error.

• APP=MyApp in connection string:
  "Reserved keyword 'app' is controlled by the driver and cannot be specified by the user"

• Application Name=MyApp in connection string:
  "Unknown keyword 'application name' is not recognized"
  (Application Name is not a recognized synonym in mssql-python; only APP is mapped, and it is reserved.)

Entra ID authentication is now fully supported on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Platform-specific requirements are outlined in the table below:

For more details on these authentication methods, refer to the Microsoft Entra ID support documentation

Following are the methods and attributes exposed through Connection Class:

Creates a new Connection object.

from mssql_python import connect

conn_str = "Server=<your_server_name>;Database=<your_db_name>;Trusted_Connection=yes;"
conn = connect(conn_str)

Creates and returns a cursor object for executing SQL commands.

cursor = conn.cursor()
cursor.execute("SELECT * FROM T1")
rows = cursor.fetchall()