func.sum on MySQL returns type 'str' when it should be returning type 'int'

[Former user]

On any table with an integer column, sum() on that column should return an integer. But it returns a string!

My code that demonstrates this is:

create table simple (
        id INT NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
        license_uri VARCHAR(255)  NOT NULL,
        search_engine VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
        count INT NOT NULL,
        timestamp DATETIME NOT NULL,
        country VARCHAR(255),
        language VARCHAR(255)
);

# Set up data
from sqlalchemy.ext.sqlsoup import SqlSoup
from sqlalchemy import *
db = SqlSoup('mysql://root:@localhost/cc')

s = select([db.simple.c.timestamp](func.sum(db.simple.c.count),))
s.group_by(db.simple.c.timestamp)
all = s.fetchall()
one = s[0](0)
sum_result = one[0](0) # zeroth based on the select() arguments

assert(type(s.fetchone()[0](0) == type(0) # This will fail

I tested on official sqlalchemy 0.2.4 and Debian 0.2.5-0.1. The problem exists on both.

[Mike Bayer]

this is a problem with MySQL/MySQLdb. just trying it with straight DBAPI i cannot get an integer out of this no matter what I try:

>>> cursor.execute("select sum(col1) + 0 from foo")
1L
>>> cursor.fetchone()
('10',)
>>> cursor.execute("select 0 + sum(col1) from foo")
1L
>>> cursor.fetchone()
('10',)

plus straight CAST throws an error, etc. MySQL not too good at stuff.