Hour 12. Working with the DBA Functions

What You'll Learn in This Hour:

• How to open a database

• How to add data to the database

• How to extract data from the database

• How to change and delete items

• How to store more complex types of data in DBM-style databases

Whichever platform you use, you will almost certainly have a DBM-style database system available to you. DBM stands for database manager, and DBM-like systems enable you to store and manipulate name/value pairs on your system.

DBA stands for database abstraction layer, and these functions are designed to provide a common interface to a range of file-based database systems.

Although DBA functions do not offer the power of a SQL database, they are flexible and easy to use. The fact that DBA functions stand above a range of common database systems means that your code is likely to be portable even if the database files themselves might not be.