Homepage of Ruby's DBI

# Ruby/DBI - a database independent interface for accessing databases - similar to Perl's DBI

$Id: index.html,v 1.21 2002/04/16 20:39:09 mneumann Exp $

Copyright (c) 2001, 2002 by Michael Neumann (neumann@s-direktnet.de)

## License

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

Optionally this program is released under the same terms of license as Ruby itself.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.

## Contributors

Michael Neumann

  Author of Ruby/DBI; wrote the DBI and most of the DBDs (except DBD::Pg).

Rainer Perl

  Author of Ruby/DBI 0.0.4 from which many good ideas were taken into the new completely rewritten version 0.0.5.

Jim Weirich

  Author of the PostgreSQL driver (DBD::Pg). Wrote many additional code (e.g. sql.rb, testcases). Gave many helpful hints and comments.

Eli Green

  Implemented DatabaseHandle#columns for Mysql and Pg.

Masatoshi SEKI

  For his version of module BasicQuote in sql.rb

John Gorman

  For his case insensitive load_driver patch and parameter parser.

David Muse

  For testing the SQLRelay DBD and for his initial DBD.

Jim Menard

  Extending Oracle DBD for method columns.

Joseph McDonald

  Fixed bug in DBD for PostgreSQL (default values in method columns).

Norbert Gawor

  Fixed bug in DBD ODBC (method columns) and proxyserver.

## Database Drivers (DBDs)

- ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) (dbd_ado)

  depend on WinOLE from RAA.

- DB2 (dbd_db2)

  depend on Michael Neumann's Ruby/DB2 Module, available from RAA.

- InterBase (dbd_interbase)

  depend on the InterBase module available from RAA.

- mSQL (dbd_msql)

  depend on the "mSQL Library" by DATE Ken available from the RAA.

- MySQL (dbd_mysql)

  depend on the "MySQL Ruby Module" by TOMITA Masahiro <tommy@tmtm.org> <URL:http://www.tmtm.org/mysql/> or available from the RAA.

- ODBC (dbd_odbc)

  depend on the Ruby/ODBC (version >= 0.5) binding by Christian Werner <chw@ch-werner.de> <URL:http://www.ch-werner.de/rubyodbc> or available from the RAA. Works also together with unixODBC. To use the 'odbc_ignorecase' option you need Ruby/ODBC >= 0.9.3.

- Oracle (dbd_oracle)

  depend on the "Oracle 7 Module for Ruby" version 0.2.11 by Yoshida Masato, available from RAA. Works fine with Oracle 8/8i.

- PostgreSQL (dbd_pg)

  depend on Noboru Saitou's Postgres Package: <URL:http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/raa-list.rhtml?name=postgres>

- Proxy/Server (dbd_proxy)

  depend on distributed Ruby (DRb) available from RAA.

- SQLite (dbd_sqlite)

  depend only on the SQLite C-library from: <URL:http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/>.

- SQLRelay (dbd_sqlrelay)

  depend on the Ruby library of SQLRelay: <URL:http://www.firstworks.com/sqlrelay/>.

- Sybase (dbd_sybase)

  this DBD is currently outdated and will not work with DBI versions > 0.0.4 !!!

## ChangeLog

See <URL:http://ruby-dbi.sourceforge.net/ChangeLog.html>.

## ToDo

See <URL:http://ruby-dbi.sourceforge.net/ToDo.html>.

## Download

Ruby/DBI is available for from the SourceForge project page.

If you're running FreeBSD or NetBSD, have a look at their package collections. FreeBSD has for DBI and each DBD an easy to install package, NetBSD currently only for PostgreSQL but more is to come.

A NetBSD package for MySQL is available at <URL:http://www.fantasy-coders.de/ruby/ruby-mysql-2.4.tar.gz>.

## Installation

All available DBDs come with this package, but you should only install the DBDs you really need.

### To install all:

    ruby setup.rb config
    ruby setup.rb setup
    ruby setup.rb install

### To install dbi and some DBDs:

    ruby setup.rb config --with=dbi,dbd_pg....
    ruby setup.rb setup
    ruby setup.rb install

Choose the packages to install by specifing them after the option `--with`.

## Mailing List

A mailinglist for DBI-specific discussions is available from the SourceForge project page.

Our former mailing-list was at <URL:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ruby-dbi-talk>; please, don't use it!

## Documentation

See the directories lib/*/doc or ext/*/doc for DBI and DBD specific informations.

The DBI specification is lib/dbi/doc/DBI_SPEC or lib/dbi/doc/html/DBI_SPEC.html or available from WWW at <URL:http://ruby-dbi.sourceforge.net/DBI_SPEC.html>.

The DBD specification (how to write a database driver) is lib/dbi/doc/DBD_SPEC or lib/dbi/doc/html/DBD_SPEC.html or available from WWW at <URL:http://ruby-dbi.sourceforge.net/DBD_SPEC.html>.

## Applications

### sqlsh.rb

The SQL command line interpreter sqlsh.rb is available in directory bin/commandline. It gets installed by default.

## Examples

Examples can be found in the examples/ subdirectory. In this directory there is the file proxyserver.rb which has to be run if you use the DBD::Proxy, to access databases remote over a TCP/IP network.

### A simple example

    require 'dbi'

    # connect to a datbase
    dbh = DBI.connect('DBI:Mysql:test', 'testuser', 'testpwd')

    puts "inserting..."
    1.upto(13) do |i|
       sql = "insert into simple01 (SongName, SongLength_s) VALUES (?, ?)"
       dbh.do(sql, "Song #{i}", "#{i*10}")
    end

    puts "selecting..."
    sth=dbh.prepare('select * from simple01')
    sth.execute

    while row=sth.fetch do
     p row
    end

    puts "deleting..."
    dbh.do('delete from simple01 where internal_id > 10')

    dbh.disconnect

### The same using Ruby's features

    require 'dbi'

    DBI.connect('DBI:Mysql:test', 'testuser', 'testpwd') do | dbh |

      puts "inserting..."
      sql = "insert into simple01 (SongName, SongLength_s) VALUES (?, ?)"
      dbh.prepare(sql) do | sth |
        1.upto(13) { |i| sth.execute("Song #{i}", "#{i*10}") }
      end

      puts "selecting..."
      dbh.select_all('select * from simple01') do | row |
        p row
      end

      puts "deleting..."
      dbh.do('delete from simple01 where internal_id > 10')

    end