SQL Server backend for Django >=3.2

django 4
django 3.2 (pypi package version 0.1)
tested and used with SQL Server 2017 and for version 4.2 with python 3.11 only

Warning

There is an official package supported by microsoft, microsoft/mssql-django.
This package does not need pyodbc nor the microsoft odbc driver, only pytds.
This passes about 15000 tests from the django test suite, but I personally use the django ORM in a basic way and don't use most of the features.

Requirements

python-tds
optional:
- bitarray, recommended by python-tds for performance
- for regex support you need to compile clr/django_clr.cs and install the resulting assembly or read and then run the tds_django/sql/clr.sql script.
- for date "math" as well as bit-shift operations you need to read and run the tds_django/sql/init.sql script.

Unsupported

JSON
foreign keys to a nullable field (limitation of SQL Server)
feel free to read tds_django/features.py for more details.
queryset iterator with chunk size

Warning If you have used another backend before

this one uses uniqueidentifier field for UUIDField while others may have used nvarchar.

Installation

For django 4.2 pip install bitarray python-tds tds_django~=4.2

For django 4.1 pip install bitarray python-tds tds_django==4.1.0

For django 4.0 pip install bitarray python-tds tds_django==4.0.0

For django 3.2 pip install bitarray python-tds tds_django==0.1

settings.DATABASES

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'tds_django',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': '1433',
        'NAME': '<db_name>',
        'USER': '<db_user>',
        'PASSWORD': '<db_password>',
    }, 
}