CS3007

Two alternative database technologies are available to CS3007 project teams:

• GDBM
  The GNU database manager. A library of routines that manages data files that contain key/data pairs. The access provided is that of storing, retrieval, and deletion by key and a non-sorted traversal of all keys. A process is allowed to use multiple data files at the same time.

• MySQL Server
  A MySQL server is running on raven, which can be accessed by programs written under UNIX. Databases have been already been created for each project team, and accounts are in place for individual team members. Account details are as follows:

  Username = UNIX username
  Default password = username

  There are two ways to access the database, via a text command line or using ODBC:

  Command line
  

  The command /opt/mysql/bin/mysql invokes an SQL command line interface for interacting with the database.

  A typical command line might look as follows:

  /opt/mysql/bin/mysql -u <username> -p -h raven

  To change passwords:

  /opt/mysql/bin/mysqladmin -u <username> -p -h raven password <new password>

  ODBC
  

  Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) provides a standard API that allows a client to access a wide range of servers (i.e. data sources). ODBC makes it simple to develop generic, scalable client applications for distributed systems. ODBC is "middleware" as it provides a layer between the client application and the underlying DBMS.

  The mySQL ODBC libraries and header files are in: /local/odbc/lib and /local/odbc/include respectively. A sample ~/.odbc.ini file can be found at: /local/odbc/etc/odbc.ini

  Details of an example C program which uses the ODBC API.

Important: You may notice that the on-line MySQL documentation refers to an extensive C language API for interacting with the database server. This is a non-standard interface so if the underlying database were to change (for example, to another relational DBMS), your code would not work!