I have a timestamp converter that works on 2.5 but doesn't on 2.7.2 (ActiveState 2.7.2.5  Attached is some pared down test code and output from a machine running 2.5 and one running 2.7.  At one point I even put print statements in the converter - they show up under 2.5 not 2.7.  I don't think it is getting called.

Can you pare it down further so that it only uses stdlib code?

Hmm.  Looks like I would need a copy of your database to be able to run this?  Maybe you could add something to create the schema and add the rows to be queried?

There are tests for the converter/adapter functionality, so it must be something specific about your schema that is triggering this.

I have condensed your code into a self-contained demo.
Unfortunately that seems to work on 2.7 (I don't have 2.5).

Worked on my machine too - but if you add "union all" AND "order by" it breaks

Use "select alpha".

Are you sure that the converter is called in Python 2.5?
I've looked into the source (Modules/_sqlite/cursor.c), and if I understand the code correctly it uses the sqlite3_column_decltype() function from the sqlite3 API to determine the column type.

So Python would be at the mercy of the sqlite3 implementation.

Perhaps the external pysqlite distribution from PyPI was installed on 2.5.  Kathryn, can you supply the output from the two versions?

import sqlite3
print(sqlite3.version)
print(sqlite3.sqlite_version)

See attached file with output from both python versions.  It is using the converter as shown in demo2a.  The code using the converter was working on 2.5 for years - it quit working on the move to 2.7 because it couldn't compare a datetime to the text string returned from the database.

Can somebody try my code on 2.7 as I don't run it anymore.  You'll probably have to undo the str => bytes dance I've just performed.  Any reason why the default convertors and adapters described here https://docs.python.org/2/library/sqlite3.html#default-adapters-and-converters can't be used?  Maybe something to do with microsecond formatting for which I know there is a completely separate issue?

I'm unable to reproduce this on 3.8 though 3.11a0. It's unclear to me if this even was an issue. (I have no ancient Python versions to test with.)

Closing as out-of-date in a day or two, unless someone disagrees.

Closing as out-of-date. If anyone disagrees, please reopen :)