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 "drivers", one for each type of database server. All drivers are loaded into memory upon libdbi initiallization and are made available to the programmer. Once a driver is instantiated, it represents a distinct database session and is called a "connection". Multiple connections may exist for a single driver, and all will function independently of each other. A star character (*) represents a wildcard matching any letters. For example, "dbi_conn_*" would represent all functions beginning with "dbi_conn_".