python fetchmany not working with oracle cx_oracle

Question

I'm working with python and oracle using the cx_Oracle module. I'm having issues getting fetchmany to work correctly. The table in the query, i2test, has over 20,000 rows, however the while loop hangs when it gets to about 1,800 rows. If I remove the order by clause... the loop hangs at about 12,000. Any advice?

cursor_metadata = cx_Oracle.Cursor(i_connection)


query_select = """SELECT name, code, cname, TO_CHAR(updatedate), TO_CHAR(downloaddate), TO_CHAR(importdate)
                  FROM imetadata.i2test
                  WHERE code like '%DIN%' AND
                        cd = 'N'
                  ORDER BY code"""


cursor_metadata.execute(query_select)

count = 0
results = cursor_metadata.fetchmany(100)
while results:
    print count
    count += 1
    results = cursor_metadata.fetchmany(100)

I realize this is probably something simple... thanks in advance.

*It only seems to hang if when I'm trying to fetch very large row sizes or big columns like varchar(2000). Other Python modules like pymssql don't seem to have this issue.

Column definitions:

CREATE TABLE IMETADATA.I2TEST (NAME VARCHAR2(700 BYTE) NOT NULL, CNAME VARCHAR2(2000 BYTE) NOT NULL, CODE VARCHAR2(50 BYTE), UPDATEDATE DATE NOT NULL, DOWNLOADDATE DATE, IMPORTDATE DATE)