Teradata MERGE yielding no results when executed through SQLAlchemy

Question

I'm attempting to use python with sqlalchemy to download some data, create a temporary staging table on a Teradata Server, then MERGEing that table into another table which I've created to permanently store this data. I'm using sql = slqalchemy.text(merge) and td_engine.execute(sql) where merge is a string similar to the below:

MERGE INTO perm_table as p
USING temp_table as t
ON p.Id = t.Id
WHEN MATCHED THEN
UPDATE
SET col1 = t.col1,
col2 = t.col2,
...
col50 = t.col50
WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN
INSERT (col1,
col2,
...
col50)
VALUES (t.col1,
t.col2,
...
t.col50)

The script runs all the way to the end without error and the SQL executes properly through Teradata Studio, but for some reason the table won't update when I execute it through SQLAlchemy. However, I've also run different SQL expressions, like the insert that populated perm_table from the same python script and it worked fine. Maybe there's something specific to the MERGE and SQLAlchemy combo?

Answer 1

Since you're using the engine directly, without using a transaction, you're probably (barring unseen configuration on your part) relying on SQLAlchemy's version of autocommit, which works by detecting data changing operations such as INSERTs etc. Possibly MERGE is not one of the detected operations. Try

sql = sqlalchemy.text(merge).execution_options(autocommit=True)
td_engine.execute(sql)