Passing Parameters to Stored Procedures using PyODBC

Question

I'm using pyODBC to connect to a SQL Server 2005 express database. I've created a stored procedure in SQLServer express that takes 2 string parameters e.g stored_proc(inpu1, input2) these parameters are of type datetime. I have tested the stored proc using management studio and it does return an appropriate result. However when i try to call the stored procedure from python(i'm using Eclipse) I get the error.

pyodbc.DataError: ('22018', '[22018] [Microsoft][SQL Native Client]Invalid character value for cast specification (0) (SQLExecDirectW)')2/9/2011 12:00:03 2/9/2011 12:20:03

The function i'm calling is as follows:

def GetAlarmFrequencyTime(tstart,tend): 

print tstart, tend  
arguments=(tstart,tend)
local_cursor=conn.cursor()
local_cursor.execute("{call dbo.GetAlarmEventHistoryFrequency_TimeRange(tstart,tend)}")

resultset_rows=local_cursor.fetchall()
print "There are" , len(resultset_rows), "records"
for single_row in resultset_rows:
    print "|" ,single_row[0], "|" ,single_row[1],"|" 

local_cursor.close()

The line that's causing the trouble is

local_cursor.execute("{call dbo.GetAlarmEventHistoryFrequency_TimeRange(tstart,tend)}") 

can anyone help me understand how I can pass multiple parameters to a stored procedure called using pyODBC. Do I need to convert tstart, and tend to a datetime format first, if so how? I have trued strptime, but even that's not succeeded, though i may be using it wrong

Answer 1

I finally got it, to work without crashing

local_cursor.execute("{call dbo.GetAlarmEventHistoryFrequency_TimeRange(tstart,tend)}")

is the wrong syntax. It should be

local_cursor.execute("{call dbo.GetAlarmEventHistoryFrequency_TimeRange(?,?)}",(tstart),(tend))

Special attention should be made to the special symbols {} and the way the parameters are passed in (tstart),(tend) local_cursor.execute("*{*call dbo.GetAlarmEventHistoryFrequency_TimeRange*(?,?)}",(tstart),(tend)*)