IBM developerWorks: Integrating database access into Linux applications; Building a MySQL-backed Web site

[ Thanks to Shailendra for this link.
]

“This article describes MySQL, a useful tool for developing
e-commerce and other complicated, dynamic Web sites that make use
of third-party databases. MySQL is a fast, multi-threaded, and
fully functional SQL server. In addition to describing the
basic architecture of the MySQL system, this article offers simple
examples in both Tcl and C++ that can start you down the path to
developing database-aware Web applications.”

“Integrating databases into Linux applications can be easy,
using both scripting languages and compiled system languages such
as C. A freely available (released under the Gnu Public License)
database known as MySQL provides a comprehensive set of SQL
functionality, and easily integrates into applications. MySQL is
fast, multi-threaded, and supports the ANSI and ODBC SQL standards.
With the addition of third-party software, MySQL supports
transaction-safe tables for transaction-processing
applications.”

“MySQL APIs are available for a variety of languages, including
almost all languages used in practice to write the back end of a
Web site. Using these APIs, we can build a MySQL client controlled
by the Web server.”

“The APIs (for database access) work on a connection-based
model. The first thing a client must do is open a connection to the
MySQL server. This includes properly authenticating the connection
with a username and password recognized by the server. After
establishing a connection, the server selects the particular
database with which to work. Upon establishing this initialization,
the client application (in our case a server-side CGI script) is
free to interact with the database in one of two ways: It can run
general SQL commands, including adding and deleting tables as well
as adding records to them; or, it can run queries on the database
which returns results. Queries generate a list of records that
match the query, which the client can then access record by record
until either all of the records have been viewed or the client
cancels the pending record retrieval. Once the script completes
working with the database, the connection to the server is
closed.”

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