Databases Commercial and Unusual

You can use many databases to serve your Web site and many file types with structures similar to databases serve niche applications. If MySQL is not quite right and PostgreSQL is too complicated, you can choose from databases much smaller than MySQL, up to databases that make PostgreSQL seem like a beginner's tool. This chapter is about the databases not discussed in Chapter 5.

This chapter contains the following sections:
   In Depth
      SQL
      To Index or Not to Index
      Relationships
      Persistent Connections
      ODBC
      DB2
      SAP DB
      Other Databases
         Adabas
         Reading filePro
         Accessing FrontBase
         Hyperwave
         Informix
         Ingres II
         InterBase
         Microsoft Access
         Microsoft SQL Server
         mSQL
         Oracle
         Ovrimos SQL Server
         SESAM/SQL-Server
         Solid
         Sybase
      Database Abstraction Layers
         DBA Functions
         DBM Functions
         DBX Functions
   Immediate Solutions
      Accessing Databases with ODBC
         Results
         Errors
         Information about Fields
         Other Functions
         New Functions
      Accessing Databases with DBA Functions
      Accessing Databases with DBM Functions
      Accessing Databases with DBX Functions
      Accessing Ingres II
      Timing Retrieval: A Path to Performance