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

$Id: index.rd,v 1.34 2004/04/22 19:59:46 mneumann Exp $

License

Copyright (c) 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 Michael Neumann <mneumann@ntecs.de> and others (see the beginning of each file for copyright holder information).

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  3. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY
AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.  IN NO EVENT SHALL
THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS;
OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF
ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

This is the BSD license which is less restrictive than GNU's GPL (General Public License).

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.
James F. Hranicky
Patch for DBD Pg (cache PGResult#result in Tuples) which increases performance by a factor around 100
Stephen Davies
Added method Statement#fetch_scroll for PostgreSQL DBD.
Dave Thomas
Several enhancements.
Daniel J. Berger
contrib/dbrc
Brad Hilton
Column coercing patch for DBD Mysql.
Sean Chittenden
Submitted several patches and helped with lots of comments; Co-owner of the project.
MoonWolf
quote/escape_bytea patch for DBD Pg. DBD::SQLite patch and Database#columns implementation. Further patches.
Paul DuBois
Fixed typos and formatting. Maintains DBD Mysql.
Tim Bates
Bug fixes for Mysql and DBI
Brian Candler
Zero-padding date/time/timestamps fix.
Florian G. Pflug
Discussion and helpful comments/benchmarks about DBD::Pg async_exec vs. exec.
Oliver M. Bolzer
Patches to support Postgres arrays for DBD::Pg
Stephen R. Veit
ruby-db2 and DBD::DB2 enhancements.
Dennis Vshivkov
Postgres DBD patches
Cail Borrell from frontbase.com
For the Frontbase DBD and C interface.

Database Drivers (DBDs)

ChangeLog

See <URL:http://ruby-dbi.rubyforge.org/ChangeLog.html>.

See <URL:http://ruby-dbi.rubyforge.org/ChangeLog> for the plain-text version.

ToDo

See <URL:http://ruby-dbi.rubyforge.org/ToDo.html>.

Download

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

Older file releases can be downloaded for a limited time from SourceForge project page. But note that this will (hopefully) soon become obsolete.

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 at the RubyForge 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.rubyforge.org/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.rubyforge.org/DBD_SPEC.html>.

Articles

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