Chapter 2

Quick Tour

2.1INTRODUCTORY TUTORIAL

iSQL_Tutorial1.sql

This introductory tutorial will rapidly take you through the basic use of the powerful interactive SQL (iSQL) database interface. iSQL is a full featured command line client side query tool useful for submitting ad hoc SQL statements to a Server. Likewise the tool provides ample output formatting capabilities.

By no means does this introduction cover the full scope, detail, or

flexibility that iSQL offers. It does however provide a quick glimpse of the benefits a tool such as this provides in a development environment.

This tutorial operates on the assumption that the database named 'myDatabase', already exists. Please refer to Section 3.6 “Introduction to the c-treeSQL ISQL Utility” in c-tree Plus Quick Start and Product Overview Guide for details on how to set up the environment for the tutorial.

This example, like all others in this set of documentation, will take the creation and use of a database and fit it into a simple four step flow of initialization, definition, management, and completion. (Init, define, manage, and you're done!)

Now let's break into the four areas.

2.1.1Init

The initialize step is as simple as launching the iSQL tool. The syntax for this is as follows:

isql [-u user_name] [-a password] [connect_string]

At the command line prompt type:

isql -u ADMIN -a ADMIN myDatabase

iSQL responds with the following prompt:

ISQL>

At this point, any valid SQL statement terminated with a semi-colon may be submitted.

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