DBOW(1) General Commands Manual DBOW(1) NAME dbow - a database compiler-compiler or front-end. SYNOPSIS dbow [ -x ] [ -N ] [ -m ] [ -v ] [ -t type ] [ -h include-file ] [ -o file ] input-file ... DESCRIPTION DBOW is a database compiler-compiler, or database front-end. It takes ta- ble definitions in a relatively high-level language and prepares C, C++, PHP, Perl (etc) functions for managing and manipulating the database records. It will also produce SQL table data for MySQL or other SQL-based databases. DBOW allows a user to define a database table using a meta-language (quite similar to the SQL CREATE TABLE syntax). This source file can then be processed by DBOW to produce SQL for actually creating the table, a C in- clude file with a structure definition, C functions for inserting, delet- ing, searching and updating the database, and housekeeping functions for maintaining the structure. DBOW allows the user to manage the table definition in one source file, and automatically produces the code for directly manipulating the database. COMMAND LINE OPTIONS -h include-file Specify the prototype file to generate. Normally this would be of the form foo.h which would specify that the C struct definition and function prototypes should be placed in a file called foo.h -m Output an intermediate M4 file rather than a final source file. DBOW uses M4 to produce the actual C, Perl and PHP source. DBOW will produce an M4 source file with the appropriate table defini- tions and will then invoke M4 along with the associated M4 template file (such as perl.m4) to produce the source. For debugging pur- poses, it is useful to see the M4 produced and manually execute it against the template. -N Do not emit line number synchronization marks. -o output-file Specify the output filename. The default is to strip the default DBOW file extension (.d) from the end of the input file and append the code-specific extension such as .sql, .c, .php etc. -t type Specifies the output filetype to produce. This can be one of mysql, c, c++, php, perl, etc. -x Turn on debugging. Only useful for debugging DBOW. -v Print the DBOW version and exit. DBOW LANGUAGE DEFINITION In a DBOW source file, lines beginning with # are comments. All DBOW commands are prefixed by a percent (%) character. The most impor- tant is the %table command. This is used to define a database table. It takes the form %table foo { column-name class optional-qualifiers ... %} This will create an SQL table called foo. Columns are specified in a comma-separated list starting with the name of the column and its class (see below) and any optional qualifiers. The following is a list of the types of columns which can be used in DBOW: tinyint tinyint(size) smallint smallint(size) mediumint mediumint(size) integer integer(size) bigint bigint(size) float float(size,prec) double double(size,prec) double precision double precision(size,prec) real real(size,prec) decimal decimal(size) decimal(size,prec) numeric numeric(size,prec) date time datetime timestamp timestamp(size) year year(size) char(size) national char(size) varchar(size) national varchar(size) tinyblob tinytext blob text mediumblob mediumtext longblob longtext Each of these can be followed by one or more of the following qualifiers: unsigned not null primary key unique auto_increment For more information on column definitions, refer to the SQL standard or to the documentation for MySQL. Note that unlike SQL, column names cannot use any of the above reserved words or any of the DBOW reserved words. The %type statement allows the user to qualify certain statements based on the output type. For example, %type C emit means if we are producing C code, then execute the emit statement. The %code statement allows us to insert code into the output file. This is handy for including copyright blocks, CVS tags or hand-crafted code. For example, the following DBOW statements add an include statement into the output code if it is we are producing C source. %type C code { /* * Make sure we include the right .h files. */ #include <stdlib.h> %} The %proto statement allows us to insert code into the include file or into the output file during the prototype phase. The %emit statement allows us to append code to the end of the output file. This is useful for including functions such as main() and the like so that the C output produced is completely self-contained. The %insert <table> [name] statement tells DBOW to create an insert func- tion in the output file. The table argument specifies the table name for the insert function and the optional name field specifies the name of the function. The %delete <table> [name] statement tells DBOW to create a delete function in the output file. The arguments are similar to those for the insert statement. The %search <table> <column> [name] statement tells DBOW to create a search function in the output file. The table argument specifies the table name for the search function, the column name specifies the name of the column to search against and the optional name field specifies the name of the function. The %update <table> <column> [name] statement tells DBOW to create an up- date function in the output file. The remaining arguments are similar to those for the search statement. The %dump <table> statement tells DBOW to produce a function in the output file which will display the contents of a given record. The %function statement is used to create complex functions which could in- volve joins, sorted output, multiple search criteria, etc. It is still in development. EXAMPLES To produce C code from a sample DBOW source file, run the command: dbow -t c sample.d This will produce the file sample.c with code to insert, delete, update and search the MySQL database table (or tables) specified in the source file. To also produce an include file with the C struct and function prototypes, use the -h option. For example; dbow -t c -h sample.h sample.d will produce an include file as well as a source file. To produce SQL for creating the actual table, use the command; dbow -t mysql sample.d which will produce a file called sample.sql. The following is a sample DBOW source file: # # Put out a C-style comment block for all file types. # %proto { /* * $Id: dbow.1,v 1.1 2004/06/25 14:57:23 dtynan Exp $ */ %} # # Define the table. # %table user { user_id mediumint(7) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT primary key, name varchar(254), handle varchar(254) NOT NULL, password varchar(254) NOT NULL %} # # Define non-standard functions... # %search user user_id %search user handle %type C dump user FILES AND DIRECTORIES These are subject to difference depending on local installation conven- tions; ${prefix} and ${exec_prefix} are installation-dependent and should be interpreted as for GNU software; they may be the same. The default for both is /usr/local. ${exec_prefix}/bin/dbow Recommended location of the interpreter. ${prefix}/share/dbow Recommended location of the directory containing the standard tem- plate modules. ${prefix}/lib Recommended location of DBOW library module. BUGS Currently the support for languages other than plain C is limited. While the C template is being worked and reworked to add features, it's unlikely that the other languages will also be kept up to date. AUTHOR Dermot Tynan E-mail: dtynan@kalopa.com Website: http://dbow.sf.net/ LICENSING DBOW is distributed under the GPL. In the near future, libdbow.a will probably be rereleased under the LGPL or the BSD license. $Date: 2004/06/25 14:57:23 $ DBOW(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMAND LINE OPTIONS | DBOW LANGUAGE DEFINITION | EXAMPLES | FILES AND DIRECTORIES | BUGS | AUTHOR | LICENSING
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