1.2. libdbi Concepts and Terminology

In this guide, the terms "user" and "programmer" are used interchangably, since the target audience is the software developer using libdbi in his program. The libdbi architecture provides serveral "plugins", one for each type of database server. All plugins are loaded into memory upon libdbi initiallization and are made available to the programmer. Once a plugin is instantiated, it represents a distinct database session and is called a "driver". Multiple drivers may exist for a single plugin, and all will function independently of each other. A star character (*) represents a wildcard matching any letters. For example, "dbi_driver_*" would represent all functions beginning with "dbi_driver_".