KCML 5 database schema definition
The master definition of a KCML5 database was held in the sources.txt file which resides in the same directory as KCML itself thus guaranteeing there is only one such definition for each KCML installation. It was a free format ascii text file similar in structure to a Windows INI file. Blank lines and redundant whitespace will be ignored. Everything after a # character up to the end of the line will also be ignored allowing comments.
The file is structured into one or more sections each preceeded by a section header name enclosed in [] characters. Section headers names are not case sensitive. There is one reserved section name of [GENERAL], the other sections are user defined section names which may include spaces. These define individual databases. The [GENERAL] section defines general system wide parameters and allows the specification of defaults for the other sections.
Each section consists of a number of keywords, an = sign and the associated value. There will not be any blanks in the keyword and it is case insensitive. The keywords currently supported are
| Keyword | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Description | A description for the database |
| Catalog | A table containing the table catalog for the database. This is required to define the section as a database. |
| Optimization | A numerical value between 0 and 9 determining how much optimization is done on SQL statements. The higher the value the more optimization is performed. Default value is 9. |
| Permissions | The permissions table containing the authorized users and their permissions. If not present then no permissions based security will apply. |
| LongUserNames | A boolean (true/false) indicating the format of the permissions file. If false then the userid is assumed to be 5 characters. If true then it is assumed to be 8 characters. |
| ShortName | A boolean (true/false) indicating the way in which column names will be returned from the data dictionary. Default false. |
| TraceFile | A file to be used for logging and for debugging. Used if TraceLevel is nonzero. This file can get very large. |
| TraceLevel | A numerical value between 0 and 9 determining how verbose the tracing should be. If not present or if zero then no tracing takes place. The higher the value the more verbose the output. |
| Update | A boolean (true/false) indicating if update operations (INSERT, UPDATE, CREATE TABLE, DROP TABLE, etc.) are allowed on the database. |
| Workspace | A directory to be used for temporary tables used for sorting |
An example of a simple sources file on a Unix system might be
# This is a comment [General] Workspace = /user8/tmp [Autoline] Catalog=/user1/home/catfile Permissions=/user1/home/perms