Version 82 of Interacting with databases

Updated 2013-09-08 21:22:34 by pooryorick

Interacting with Databases presents information about databases relative to Tcl .

TDBC is the official specification for and implementation of a generic database interface. The focus now is on expanding the number drivers to cover more databases. Older database interface packages are being modified or rewritten as TDBC drivers.

See Also

Database Interface
Information about generic datatabase interface proposals and implementations
Regular Expressions: Tcl and Database Managers -- A Survey (alternat ) ,Cameron Laird, 2001
BOOK Database Backed Web Sites
A simple database
Discussions on making data file access simpler
SQL Relay
"has native client API's for" several languages, including Tcl, connecting to several different "database backends."

Resources

database API mailing list
web interface

Little Database Systems

adb
a pure-tcl database engine with optional (non-pure) extensions to MySQL and XML
TclVSdb
Very Simple Database package Native Tcl database facility, written in Tcl

Pre-Relational Database Systems

Berkeley DB
Includes Tcl Extension for accessing all the functionality
gdbm

Hybrid Database Systems

Metakit
has a wonderful Tcl binding that makes all the power of Metakit available in a natural and intuitive way.

Object Databases

OBST

Time Series Database Systems

FameTcl

Specialized Database Systems

NLItcl.tar.gz
Natural Language Inc's NLI binding
PiTcl
Palm Pilot

Relational Databases Systems

ADABASE D
AdabasTcl
db2tcl (DB2)
(is it true that DB2's native interface is so close to ODBC that TclODBC can be the basis for a "native" binding?)
Informix
isqltcl
INGRES
Interbase
mSQL (mini SQL)
Blackbourn's Minerva miniSQL (mSQL?) binding miniSQL database interface (Blackbourn)
MrPersister
is a high level library on top of JDBC
MySQL
Oracle
debbie , Oratcl
PostgreSQL
RDB (dead link)
SQLite ,by D. Richard Hipp
Sybase
DB2
FrontBase
see the downloads area

Bindings

Starbase.tcl
Sybtcl
   [ftp://ftp.tcl.tk/pub/tcl/all/t/tclOBST/%|%tclOBST] (alternates: [http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/obst/OBST3-4.3/tclOBST-1.2.tar.gz] ,[http://ftp.sunet.se/pub/databases/object-oriented/obst/OBST3-4.3/tclOBST-1.2.tar.gz] [ftp://ftp4.gwdg.de/pub/linux/obst/OBST3-4.3/tclOBST-1.2.tar.gz])
TCLSNM
tcldbi
tclODBC
tclsql
a Windows-only C++-based SQL 3.0 ODBC extension for reading,inserting,updating, and deleting records from a database
TKHINote
for Lotus Notes

User Interfaces

A Mini Database Manager
a reasonly-cabpable little interface to create, edit and browse database tables
dgDBBrowser
PgAccess
a graphical interface to PostgreSQL and application building environment written in Tcl/Tk

Description

Jacob Levy has written the Interfaces to lesser known databases such as OBST, Coral, MOREplus, Qddb, etc.

AOLserver

AOLserver has its own drivers for many databases (Oracle, PostgreSQL, Sybase, Solid, etc.), all accessible from the same ns_db Tcl API. And the AOL maintainers have started refactoring the C code to make some of this stuff shared libraries, and thus potentially very useful in non-AOLserver environments as well...

Other Bindings

Here are a variety of other Tcl database bindings

MSSQL database access *

Basic question re: MSSQL database access

JDM 2006-08-02: One interface that I do not see above is for MS SQL Server databases. Is this because none is needed? Or because the Sybase interface will work? Or because no one has written one specifically for MS SQL so ODBC connections should be used? I apologize if I have overlooked something.

TP answers 2006-08-02: For MSSQL interface, Sybtcl should work, and I would recommend using the FreeTDS [L1 ] interface library, as it can compile options to include various MSSQL protocol versions. FreeTDS can also build an ODBC driver, so Tclodbc works too. For most of my DB interface needs lately, I've been using Tclodbc on both Unix/Linux and Windows.

JDM 2006-08-02: Many thanks for the quick answer! I will try Tclodbc. As someone new to TCL, I am looking for examples that use Tclodbc as well. Can you point me to any? Thanks in advance.

Redis

The Redis project [L2 ] supports Tcl as well as other languages. The home page says of Redis:

Redis is an advanced key-value store. It is similar to memcached but the dataset is not volatile, and values can be strings, exactly like in memcached, but also lists, sets, and ordered sets. All this data types can be manipulated with atomic operations to push/pop elements, add/remove elements, perform server side union, intersection, difference between sets, and so forth. Redis supports different kind of sorting abilities.

In order to be very fast but at the same time persistent the whole dataset is taken in memory, and from time to time saved on disc asynchronously (semi persistent mode) or alternatively every change is written into an append only file (fully persistent mode). Redis is able to rebuild the append only file in background when it gets too big.

The Redis source tree contains test scripts written in Tcl.