You don't have to install all of MySQL, just the client libraries. I would
assume that almost every MySQL connector uses these libraries; but, you
might see if the MySQL-ODBC connector will work without them. It is a long
shot. Your last option would be to recreate your own connector without
using the MySQL client libraries. I am not really sure what the purpose of
reinventing this wheel would be.
I believe that the coming trend is to implement the MySQL client
protocol directly in Python, thereby obviating the need for any MySQL
client installation on the machine hosting the Python code.
The pymysql project at
http://code.google.com/p/pymysql/ is one such
solution, aimed at satisfying Python 3 users without the need to port
existing low-level client code.
As an irrelevance might I also add that the trend for built-in extension
modules is to require a reference implementation in Python to ease the
task of those wishing to port the language and get as much functionality
(albeit at some performance in cost) available as early in the porting
cycle as possible.
regards
Steve