2. The Ingres Software Development Kit

In this section the Ingres SDK is introduced and you come to know how to get it.

2.1 University Ingres and Commercial Ingres

Let us start with an important fact: there are two different types of Ingres. The original one, which was designed and developed by a research group led by Michael Stonebraker at University of California, Berkeley, was real open source software. It was free to use and distribute, source code included. In fact, it is still free software, although its development stopped in 1989. Its last version (version 8.9) made it into some Linux distributions as well. If you are interested in it, you can download it from, say

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/suse/ap1/ingres.rpm

ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/suse/ap1/ingrtool.rpm

In 1979, with the foundation of Relational Technology, Inc., the career of Commercial Ingres started. Since 1995 it has been distributed by Computer Associates. Its latest version is called Ingres II 2.0. This HOWTO deals with the installation of this version of Ingres.

2.2 The Software Development Kit

Ingres, being commercial software, is not free to use. However, CA, like other RDBMS vendors, offers a free version of it (the Software Development Kit) to everyone who is interested in getting to know Ingres. The SDK has two variants, one for Windows NT and one for Linux. These variants aren't quite the same as far as components are concerned. Obviously, we are engaged in installing the SDK for Linux here. This contains the following elements:

• Intelligent DBMS: the database engine
• Internet Commerce Enabled (ICE): this component makes database access through the Web possible
• Enhanced Security: the tool supporting mandatory access control
• C2 Security Auditing: the possibility of C2 level auditing
• Terminal Monitors: forms-based and command line SQL interfaces
• Querying and Reporting Tools: forms-based querying, report-writing and report-running tools plus a forms editor
• Querying and Reporting Runtime: like the previous one, but without the forms editor
• Vision Pro: integrated, forms-based development environment with a code generator
• Embedded SQL Precompilers: precompilers for embedding SQL statements in 3GL applications. Supported languages are C, C++, COBOL, Fortran

The SDK does not contain the following components:

• Net: this component makes possible for Ingres utilities and user applications to have access to databases residing on different machines
• Enterprise Access: communication with different database management systems and other, non-relational data sources (used to be called Gateways)
• Star: to handle distributed databases
• Replicator: support for replication functions
• Visual DBA: GUI database management tool
• OpenRoad: object-oriented, GUI development tool

You can order a free copy of the Ingres SDK CD at

http://www.cai.com/registration/cd_ingres.htm

Remember that you are not allowed to install the SDK in a business environment. It is for evaluating Ingres and prototyping applications only.

The freshest beta version of the SDK is always at

http://www.cai.com/products/betas/ingres_linux/ingres_linux.htm

If you want to give the beta version a try, check first if it is newer than your CD. You can do it by comparing the ReadMe file on the CD to its counterpart on the page above. This on-line ReadMe contains the expiration date of the beta as well.

The full version of Ingres for Linux isn't out yet. According to CA, it is due to arrive by the end of 1999.

Let me note that the Linux version of CA's Unicenter TNG Framework also includes Ingres as its embedded database management system. For this reason, knowing Ingres may come in handy when using Unicenter, too. You can order a free Unicenter TNG Framework CD from

http://www.cai.com/registration/tng_framework_linux/index.htm: for RedHat

http://www.cai.com/registration/tng_framework_linux/suse_linux.htm: for SuSE

2.3 The SDK CD

The SDK CD contains both the Windows NT and the Linux versions of the SDK. You can find the Linux files in the following directories:

• /doc: the manuals in PDF format. They are also available at http://www.cai.com/products/ingres/documentation_set.htm
• /int_lnx: this directory contains ingres.tar, the tarball to be installed. You can find an almost identical version of the ReadMe file here, too, under the name of readme.txt. Don't forget to read this file! ingres.tar can be installed directly from the CD or you can copy it to hard disk first.