optionally get column names with result set

sqlalchemy

from sqlalchemy import create_engine

def db_results(conn, sql, columns=True):
    x = conn.execute(sql)
    out = x.fetchall()
    if columns:
        out = [dict(zip(x.keys(), a)) for a in out]
    return out

engine = create_engine('mssql+pymssql://user:[email protected]:1433/my_db')
connection = engine.connect()
sql = 'select things from some_table'
result = db_results(connection, sql)

print result