New open-source AWS Advanced Python Wrapper driver now available for Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS

Posted on: May 23, 2024

The Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Python Wrapper driver is now generally available for use with Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and MySQL-compatible edition database clusters. This database driver provides support for faster switchover and failover times, and authentication with AWS Secrets Manager or AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).

The AWS Advanced Python Wrapper driver wraps the open-source Psycopg and the MySQL Connector/Python drivers and supports Python versions 3.8 or newer. You can install the aws-advanced-python-wrapper package using the pip command along with either the psycpg or mysql-connector-python open-source packages. The wrapper driver relies on monitoring database cluster status and being aware of the cluster topology to determine the new writer. This approach reduces switchover and failover times from tens of seconds to single digit seconds compared to the open-source drivers.

The AWS Advanced Python Wrapper driver is released as an open-source project under the Apache 2.0 License. Check out the project on GitHub to view installation instructions and documentation.