eXtremeDB embedded database application programming interfaces (APIs)

McObject’s eXtremeDB embedded database provides four application programming interfaces, enabling developers to use a preferred interface type and to tailor applications for desired performance, predictability, reliability and accessibility to external systems.

eXtremeDB Native API

This interface is navigational, consisting of of functions that navigate through the database programmatically, working on one record at a time. Major advantages cited for navigational APIs are determinism – it is known, when the application is compiled, exactly how the data will be traversed – and performance by virtue of bypassing the parsing, optimization and execution of dynamic SQL.

eXtremeDB’s native API is unique in that it is type-safe. The interface functions are generated at compile time and are specific to a particular data design; the functions “know” the type of data they are intended to handle, and any typing errors will be caught when the application is compiled. This eliminates a major cause of costly run-time bugs. To learn about the benefits of this design, see the EE Times article, Toward self-diagnostic APIs for embedded systems.

In addition, because functions are specific to a given data design, they are highly intuitive, reducing the development learning curve.

Uniform Data Access (UDA) API

This is a static version of the navigational API, for developers who prefer the “one size fits all” approach of using a single function library to perform the same tasks across a variety of database designs.

eXtremeDB SQL API

McObject's eXtremeSQL embedded database interface is a high-performance implementation of the SQL database programming language for eXtremeDB (including eXtremeDB Fusion). eXtremeDB combined with eXtremeSQL is an ideal solution for application development in fields like finance and banking where real-time responsiveness is a must and SQL is the dominant database language. Many programmers already know SQL. Also, with its ability to express complex queries relatively succinctly, SQL can sometimes do more in fewer lines of code.

SQL ODBC API

The eXtremeDB embedded database's support for Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity Standard (ODBC) greatly expands eXtremeDB’s ability to share data with systems ranging from mainframes to servers to desktop applications, and enables developers to create new eXtremeDB-based applications using an open and familiar database API.

Based on the Call Level Interface specified by the SQL Access Group, ODBC is a library of functions that lets any ODBC-enabled application connect to any database for which an ODBC driver exists, and retrieve/insert/update/delete data using SQL statements. Support for this API first became common in Microsoft Windows systems. However, an ODBC driver manager and ODBC drivers now also exist on UNIX, Linux and many other platforms, creating a universe of systems that can potentially share data with eXtremeDB .

McObject’s technical implementation of ODBC sustains the benefits of high performance and minimal code footprint for which eXtremeDB is known. While applications gain access to most ODBC-compliant databases via driver and driver manager software layers, eXtremeDB also exposes the ODBC application programming interface as direct library calls. This streamlined approach eliminates the driver manager and associated program execution steps, leading to faster performance and smaller code size.

Get more information about the eXtremeDB embedded database.