slqlalchemy UniqueConstraint VS Index(unique=True)

The main difference is that while the Index API allows defining an index outside of a table definition as long as it can reference the table through the passed SQL constructs, a UniqueConstraint and constraints in general must be defined inline in the table definition:

To apply table-level constraint objects such as ForeignKeyConstraint to a table defined using Declarative, use the __table_args__ attribute, described at Table Configuration.

The thing to understand is that during construction of a declarative class a new Table is constructed, if not passed an explicit __table__. In your example model class the UniqueConstraint instance is bound to a class attribute, but the declarative base does not include constraints in the created Table instance from attributes. You must pass it in the table arguments:

class MyTable(DeclBase):
    __tablename__ = 'my_table'
    ...
    # A positional argument tuple, passed to Table constructor
    __table_args__ = (
        UniqueConstraint(attr_2, attr_3, name='my_table_uidx'),
    )

Note that you must pass the constraint name as a keyword argument. You could also pass the constraint using Table.append_constraint(), if called before any attempts to create the table:

class MyTable(DeclBase):
    ...

MyTable.__table__.append_constraint(
    UniqueConstraint('attr_2', 'attr_3', name='my_table_uidx'))