possible smarter versioning

caveclient/base.py

@@ -251,7 +251,10 @@ def server_version(self) -> Optional[Version]:
         """The version of the service running on the remote server. Note that this
         refers to the software running on the server and has nothing to do with the
         version of the datastack itself."""
-        return self._server_version
+        if self._server_version is None and self._api_version is not None:
+            return Version(str(self._api_version))
+        else:
+            return self._server_version
 
     @staticmethod
     def raise_for_status(r, log_warning=True):

caveclient/materializationengine.py

@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@
 from cachetools import TTLCache, cached
 from cachetools.keys import hashkey
 from IPython.display import HTML
+from packaging.version import Version
 from requests import HTTPError
 
 from .auth import AuthClient
@@ -1659,7 +1660,7 @@ def _assemble_attributes(
     @property
     def tables(self) -> TableManager:
         """The table manager for the materialization engine."""
-        if self.server_version < "3.0.0":
+        if self.server_version < Version("3"):
             if self._tables is None:
                 if self.fc is not None and self.fc._materialize is not None:
                     self._tables = TableManager(self.fc)
@@ -1698,7 +1699,7 @@ def tables(self) -> TableManager:
     @property
     def views(self) -> ViewManager:
         """The view manager for the materialization engine."""
-        if self.server_version < "3.0.0":
+        if self.server_version < Version("3"):
             if self._views is None:
                 if self.fc is not None and self.fc._materialize is not None:
                     self._views = ViewManager(self.fc)
@@ -1896,7 +1897,7 @@ def live_live_query(
         >>>        "column_name": "regex_string"
         >>>     }
         """
-        if self.server_version < 3:
+        if self.server_version < Version("3"):
             logging.warning(
                 "Deprecation: this method is to facilitate beta testing of this feature, \
                 it will likely get removed in future versions. "