Question

A developer maintains a Python service with dozens of functions that build SQL queries by concatenating raw strings. The team wants to modernize this code to use SQLAlchemy ORM models while preserving the exact query behavior. The developer opens one representative data-access module and asks Copilot Chat to convert it. What is the most effective way to use Copilot for this modernization task while minimizing the risk of introducing behavioral changes?

Accepted Answer

Ask Copilot to convert one function at a time, then run the existing test suite (or ask Copilot to generate tests capturing current behavior first) to verify each converted query returns identical results

Answer

Ask Copilot in a single prompt to rewrite the entire codebase to SQLAlchemy at once, then merge the changes without further review since Copilot preserves semantics automatically

Answer

Ask Copilot only to add comments describing what each raw SQL string does, since Copilot cannot generate ORM code from raw SQL

Answer

Disable Copilot for this task because it was trained before SQLAlchemy existed and will hallucinate the ORM API