Configuring

Configuration for development

If you want to develop applications using libgda, you should install the libgda-dev[el] package if you do a RPM or Debian-based installation. If you compiled the source code, development files are installed in your system.

The only step you need to do to make sure everything is well installed, is to check that libgda libraries and binaries are seen by your system. That is, make sure that the libgda bin/ directory is in your PATH environment variable, as well as the lib/ in your LD_LIBRARY_PATH (or /etc/ld.so.conf file).

You have to include a headers file, and it is:

#include <libgda/libgda.h>
        

Configuration for accessing a database

If you want to access a data source through a GDA provider, you must first of all have access to this provider, and most importantly, this provider should have access to its specific data source. So, first have your database up and running. For this, you'll have to check your specific data source documentation, or see the libgda providers' specific documentation.

Once you've got your GDA provider installed, whether on your machine or on another one on the network, you must configure your local system to have access to it. If you're on a local installation, once you have installed the GDA provider (by compiling it or by installing its RPM or Debian package), the provider is visible in your machine. This is because the provider installs itself in a well known location that makes libgda itself know about the new provider.

Then, the next step is to configure the data sources you want available on your system. For doing this, you should, as for now, use GNOME-DB, which is a front-end to libgda for the GNOME project. [1]

Command-line tools will be provided in libgda for doing so in a not-too-distant future, so you may want to know what information you need to setup a data source.

One of the problem GDA solves is the naming of data sources. Every database system has it's own way of defining names for it's databases. For example MySQL uses the hostname, port number, and the name of the database. Other databases, like Solid use the hostname and port number only. There is no support for multiple databases per server. Because the client does not need all these details, the libgda configuration defines all the properties of such a data source, so that the correct data base server can be contacted. This information is accessed by the client library and sent to the provider, which in turn will parse the string to decide which database must be connected to. The data stored for each data source is as follows:

	      [sales]
	      Provider=MySQL                                      
              DSN=DATABASE=test;HOST=localhost;PORT=1111   
	      Description=MySQL Test Database in native mode      
	      Username=username                                   
	      Password=password                                   
	    

The XML configuration file (~/.libgda/config) is not recommended to be modified by hand and, about our example, it is something like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<libgda-config>
  <section path="/apps/libgda/Datasources/sales">
    <entry name="DSN" type="string" value="PORT=1111;DATABASE=test;HOST=localhost"/>
    <entry name="Description" type="string" value="MySQL Test Database in native mode"/>
    <entry name="Password" type="string" value="password"/>
    <entry name="Provider" type="string" value="MySQL"/>
    <entry name="Username" type="string" value="username"/>
  </section>
</libgda-config>
        

            gda_config_save_data_source ("foo_ds", "PostgreSQL", "DATABASE=foo_db",
                                         "description of foo_ds", "foo_username, "foo_password");
            gda_config_save_data_source ("other_foo_ds", "MySQL", "DATABASE=other_foo_db,HOST=db.foo.com",
                                         "description of other_foo_ds", "foo", NULL);
            

            gda_config_remove_data_source("foo_ds");
            

              void
              list_datasources (void)
              {
                GList *ds_list;
                GList *node;
                GdaDataSourceInfo *info;
              
                ds_list = gda_config_get_data_source_list ();
              
                g_print ("\n");
                for (node = g_list_first (ds_list); node != NULL; node = g_list_next (node))
                  {
                    info = (GdaDataSourceInfo *) node->data;
              
                    g_print
                      ("NAME: %s PROVIDER: %s CNC: %s DESC: %s USER: %s PASSWORD: %s\n",
                       info->name, info->provider, info->cnc_string, info->description,
                       info->username, info->password);
              
                  }
                g_print ("\n");
              
                gda_config_free_data_source_list (ds_list);
              
              }
              

              void
              list_providers (void)
              {
                GList *prov_list;
                GList *node;
                GdaProviderInfo *info;
              
                prov_list = gda_config_get_provider_list ();
              
                for (node = g_list_first (prov_list); node != NULL;
                     node = g_list_next (node))
                  {
                    info = (GdaProviderInfo *) node->data;
              
                    g_print ("ID: %s\n", info->id);
              
                  }
              
                gda_config_free_provider_list (prov_list);
              
              }
              

Provider's specific information

This section provides information specific to each of the available libgda providers.