Code replicating the error:

from sqlalchemy import create_engine, Table, Column, Integer
from sqlalchemy.ext.declarative import declarative_base
from sqlalchemy.orm import sessionmakerBase = declarative_base()class Message(Base):__tablename__ = 'messages'id = Column(Integer, primary_key=True)message = Column(Integer)engine = create_engine('sqlite:///' + filename_of_your_choice)
session = sessionmaker(bind=engine)newmessage = Message()
newmessage.message = "Hello"messages = session.query(Message).all()

Running this code yields:

Traceback (most recent call last):File "C:/aaron/test.py", line 20, in <module>session.commit()
TypeError: unbound method commit() must be called with Session instance as first argument (got nothing instead)

I'm 95% positive that the filename isn't the issue as I can connect to it from the shell

any ideas?

The return value from sessionmaker() is a class. You need to instantiate it before using methods on the instance.