Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8 Man page of qddb_schema

qddb_schema

Section: Herrin Software Development, Inc. (1)
Updated: 21 Oct 2000
Index Return to Main Contents

NAME

qddb_schema - open/close and view characteristics of a Qddb schema.

SYNOPSIS

qddb_schema open Relation
qddb_schema leaves <schema_desc> ?<attribute>?
qddb_schema option type|verbosename|alias|isexpandable|exclude|autoincrement \
        <schema_desc> <attr name>
qddb_schema path <schema_desc>
qddb_schema print <schema_desc>
qddb_schema secondarycaching <schema_desc> on|off
qddb_schema datestyle <schema_desc> us|european
qddb_schema excludewords <schema_desc>
qddb_schema close <schema_desc>

DESCRIPTION

qddb_schema open

returns a descriptor <schema_desc> referring to a Qddb schema. This token may be used with other Qddb TCL commands. It will search for the relation in the directories specified by QDDBDIRS after looking in the current directory. QDDBDIRS is of the same format as the PATH environment variable, for example,

        /usr/local/qddb/databases:/u/eric/databases

is a valid path. A file with the name 'HashTable' is required in the Relation directory (qnewdb(1) builds this file).

qddb_schema leaves

returns a list of all leaves in the Schema in the dot-separated form required by all Qddb TCL commands. If the optional ?<attribute>? field is specified, then all leaves at or below that point in the schema are returned. Using the following schema:

    Name (
       First verbosename "Client's First Name" *
       Middle *
       Last verbosename "Client's Middle Name"
    ) *
    Address

an example might be:

    % set s [qddb_schema open MyRelation]
    % qddb_schema leaves $s
    Name.First
    Name.Middle
    Name.Last
    Address
    % qddb_schema leaves $s Name
    Name.First
    Name.Middle
    Name.Last
    % qddb_schema leaves $s Address
    Address

qddb_schema option

returns the value of the option specified for the given schema attribute. The type option requires a leaf attribute and will give an TCL error otherwise. The possible type strings are integer, real, date, and string. If the type is unspecified in the Schema, it defaults to string. The exclude option returns 1 or 0 depending on whether the exclude option is specified for the given leaf attribute. The isexpandable and autoincrement options return yes or no depending on whether the given attribute is expandable or autoincremented respectively. The format option returns the format string, and the separators option returns the separators string for the given leaf attribute. The other options will accept an attribute at any level.

qddb_schema path

prints the full pathname of the Qddb schema from the directory given on qddb_schema open. An absolute path is always returned.

qddb_schema print

prints the schema in a list format. For example, the schema defined above will be printed as:

        { Name { "" yes } {
               { First { "Client's First Name" yes } {} }
               { Middle { "" yes } {} }
               { Last { "Client's Middle Name" no } {} }
        }

This list may be traversed to build generic interfaces, (see nxqddb(1)). Each list consists of (1) an attribute name, (2)) a list of characteristics for that attribute, and (3) a list containing any subattributes. (2) consists of the verbosename (if any) and yes/no for whether the attribute is expandable.

qddb_schema secondarycaching

allows you to temporarily turn on or off secondary caching. This option is primarily for temporarily turning off the Use cached secondary search schema option which slows down the writing of tuples significantly while maintaining search speed. Temporarily disabling secondary caching allows you to make mass additions or changes to an existing or new database (if you plan to immediately stabilize afterward) without changing the option in the schema. Please note that you should perform any searching before disabling secondary caching, disable the cache, make your modifications and write them to disk, then immediately stabilize the database. This option is intended to be used on idle databases only; use it only if you understand what you are doing.

qddb_schema datestyle

changes the default date style for input purposes. No in-memory tuples are automatically converted, so this should be one of the first commands in the script after qddb_schema open.

qddb_schema excludewords

returns a list containing all words in the ExcludeWords file, or the null string if the ExcludeWords schema option is off.

qddb_schema close

closes the Qddb schema associated with <schema_desc>. Other Qddb structures that require the closed schema will not be deleted (keylists, etc.) and cannot be used after the schema is closed. Multiple schemas may be open simultaneously and the same schema may be open more than once. Qddb does not understand the relationship between two different schema descriptors that are opened on the same relation.

REFERENCES

A Guide to QDDB
Eric H. Herrin II and Raphael A. Finkel

Qddb User's Guide

An ASCII Database for Fast Queries of Relatively Stable Data
Eric H. Herrin II and Raphael A. Finkel
Computing Systems, Volume 4 Number 2
University of California Press, Berkeley CA

Schema and Tuple Trees: An Intuitive Structure for 
Representing Relational Data
Eric H. Herrin, II and Raphael A. Finkel
Computing Systems, Volume 9, Number 2
MIT Press, Cambridge MA

TCL and the TK Toolkit 
John K. Ousterhout
Addison-Wesley, 1994
ISBN 0-201-63337-X

DIAGNOSTICS

qddb_schema will report an error if it cannot find the Qddb schema specified.

BUGS

None known.

This document was created by man2html, using the manual pages.
Time: 18:55:30 GMT, October 31, 2018