Best location for sqlite db file on mac OSX - database

I am deploying a Delphi Firemonkey app on Mac OSX and being new to Mac programming I am wondering where I should install the sqlite database file.
Under Windows I usually put it in the application installation directory but this isn't appropriate on a Mac (I think!).
There will not be a need for multi-user access to the db file
I have currently placed it in /Library/Application Support/Myapp/Myapp.db but wonder if there is a better (or official) place to put it.

I'd suggest that you take a look at the guidelines from Apple.
You can use '/Library/Application Support/Myapp/Myapp.db' if the database does not contain user specific data. Otherwise use '~/Library/Application Support/Myapp/Myapp.db'.
Please don't hard code those folders, but use NSFileManager.URLForDirectory for retrieving them.

Related

Is it possible to use a GUI based text editor (e.g. Eclipse) from the terminal?

I'd like to use terminal for all of my normal git and compiling and running processes (my school has a server that is linked to my repo on bitbucket), but I really don't like terminal-based text editing software such as Emacs and Vim. Is it possible to open and edit files from the terminal using a GUI based text editor? The reason I'm asking is because the terminal is the only way I can access the server files. Thanks in advance!
Aw, but vim is the best! :) Well, you can use nano, which is friendlier. Or, if you insist: if you are using SSH to connect to the server (and the server has an X server running !) then you can look into the ssh -X option to view X windows on your remote machine.
Oh and you could look into scp command as well (behaves almost just like regular cp, but the destination is on another host). That way you could edit on your machine, then copy it via SSH (although you'd want to be careful when copying files directly to the server filesystem)
Edit: Also, if you really don't like using the terminal (why though? (-: ), some file managers allow you to get the same functionality of the previous commands purely via GUI (for example).
You've left out some important information that someone would need to know to answer your questions. The other posters have made some assumptions.
You've mentioned this "terminal", but it's not clear exactly what that is, or how you're getting to it. What kind of computer do you have in front of you? What shell is running in that terminal? Is the shell running on your local computer, or have you remotely connected to a server and running that shell on the remote computer?
Based on what you said, I have a feeling you're making a remote connection to a server, perhaps using ssh. You likely have either a Windows or Mac PC in front of you. In those circumstances, running a GUI editor like Eclipse is possible, but likely not practical. You would have to have Eclipse installed on that remote computer, and you would be displaying the Eclipse window on your local computer using the X11 protocol. That takes a lot of bandwidth.
If my assumptions are correct, my recommendations depend on how long you expect you're going to want to stay familiar with this environment. If you intend to do this sort of work forever, then you should learn vi and Emacs to the best of your ability. As someone who's been using Emacs likely longer than you've been alive, I'd recommend you learn it, but vi is also a critical skill.
UNIXY systems provide open or gopen, depending on your OS, that should get the job done. From the man page:
By default, gopen will open filename with the application currently assigned to the file's extension. But by specifing the -a flag on the command line you can tell gopen to open the file with another application.
This means that you can use it to open files in your preferred editor
with a line like
gopen -a Eclipse file

How to synchronize code files on windows with WSL/linux?

Basically I have some C/C++ code that I need to build and debug on a Linux machine. Unfortunately, my windows laptop doesn't have enough free hard space to install some Linux dist nor does it have enough free RAM to comfortably run VM.
Until now, I dealt with it rather comfortably using WSL, but the scale was rather small. It was easy to edit and debug 2-3 .c files through CLI and gdb, but it became really annoying on a large scale projects.
I want something simple as "edit code in windows IDE [X], compile it on remote Linux/WSL (the project uses Makefiles), and preferably debug it via gdb".
VS has something close to what I want, but it can't deal with existing Linux projects. It needs to create a new configuration which is alien to the project's Makefile.
I know this question is a bit old, but I think the solution is to make a symlink between your WSL folder and the Window's folder. This is how I handled it for a Ubuntu-20.04 WSL:
Access PowerShell in Administrator mode
Type cmd.exe in the PowerShell
Once cmd.exe is opened, type mklink /d C:\<path_to_your_Windows_folder> \\wsl$\Ubuntu-20.04\home\<your_user>\<path_to_your_WSL_folder>
EDIT
This was tested under Windows 10 Version 2004 with WSL2
I'm unsure about C and C++ but it sounds like this is exactly the same as how i work in node and javascript every day.
I checkout my code using git inside WSL to a location like /mnt/c/code/myproject. Then using sublime/VS code/webstorm i edit the files in windows in the location c:\code\myproject this works really well and have been doing this every day for over a year.
Things to be aware of are that you need to ensure that your editor of choice saves files with linux line endings and that all command line operations are done inside WSL.
Please see this article to see the differences between windows and linux files and how this works inside the WSL.
I want something simple as "edit code in windows IDE , compile it on remote linux/WSL
You will have something as simple as that.
Only with Windows 19.03 though:
See "Updated WSL in Windows 10 version 1903 lets you access Linux files from Windows"
Microsoft's Craig Loewen says:
In the past, creating and changing Linux files from Windows resulted in losing files or corrupting data. Making this possible has been a highly requested and long anticipated feature. We're proud to announce you can now easily access all the files in your Linux distros from Windows.
So how does this work? He goes on to explain:
To put it briefly: a 9P protocol file server facilitates file related requests, with Windows acting as the client.
We've modified the WSL init daemon to include a 9P server. This server contains protocols that support Linux metadata, including permissions.
There is a Windows service and driver that acts as the client and talks to the 9P server (which is running inside of a WSL instance).
Client and server communicate over AF_UNIX sockets, since WSL allows interop between a Windows application and a Linux application using AF_UNIX as described in this post.
Warning:
The old rules still apply, you should NOT access your Linux files inside of the AppData folder!
If you try to access your Linux files through your AppData folder, you are bypassing using the 9P server, which means that you will not have access to your Linux files, and you could possibly corrupt your Linux distro.

Extract cab file and use the database

I found an old windows mobile dictionary application and I want to get the database. I extract it but I don't know how to convert it to csv or sql file. Have anybody idea about it ?
You can download the file from here http://www.mediafire.com/download/z32xgmc9fia3nr2/OGD.Akilli.Sozluk.CAB
And I use Ubuntu.
SQLite makes available the C source code to compile a shell program which can be used to do this. It's apparently also included by Ubuntu. Here is the man page for the sqlite shell included with Ubuntu. Please review the documentation as there are a few ways to convert to CSV or get the schema of a table.
Alternatively, you can use a 3rd party tool to view the database in a GUI. I can't speak for Linux solutions, but Firefox has a 3rd party plugin called "SQLite Manager" that will let you use SQLite files in a GUI if you prefer it that way.

Database errors in Quantum Grid demos in Delphi XE Professional

Whenever I open one of the Quantum Grid demos in Delphi XE Pro (on Windows 7 32-bit), the following error is displayed for every table (I think) in the project:
error message http://www.tranglos.com/img/qgerror.png
The message is:
Network initialization failed.
File or directory does not exist.
File: C:\PDOXUSRS.NET
Permission denied.
Directory: C:\.
I understand permission issues writing to c:\, but the result is that while I can build and run the demo projects, no data is displayed, which makes the demos rather useless. And what kind of database writes its configuration to c:\ directory in the 21st century anyway? :) (Yes, I know very little about Paradox databases, but I won't ever be using one either. I just want to learn how to use the grid.)
Using BDE Administrator I've tried changing the Paradox "NET DIR" value to a folder with write permissions on the C drive. Result: now the database tables cannot find their data:
Path not found.
File: C:..\..\Data\GENRES.DB.
...and the unhelpfully truncated path gives no indication where the files are expected to be.
Is there a way to work around the problem so that the demos can load their sample data correctly?
Did you install the BDE correctly? It should use the DBDEMOS files. Do you see such an alias in the BDE administration utility? Can you open that database in one of the Delphi demos?
The BDE is not a XXI century database, it was developed twenty years ago and never upgraded lately. It's an obsolete tecnology, but because it comes still with every release of Delphi with a known database it is still often used in demos because nothing new has to be installed.
Anyway that file is not its configuration file. It's a sharing lock file to allow more than one user to use the database concurrently. Because it is a file based database without a central server, it has to use such kind of shared files. Usually its position is changed to a network share, but it defaults to C:\ for historical reasons.
Anyway it's not only the BDE still attempting to write in the prong directories. I still see a full bunch of applications attempting to write to C:\ (especially logs) or other read-only positions.
Using BDE Admin to change the location for PDOXUSRS.NET helped, but it wasn't sufficient. DevExpress did the right thing in specifying a relative folder for the data location, and the relative folder seems perfectly allright, but for some reason the DB can't find it.
Solution: under the \Demos\ folder find all the *.dfm files that contain the string
..\..\Data
and replace that string with the absolute path to the demos folder. That done, all the demos open correctly.
I know this message from our own applications. It has to do with security measures introduced with Windows Vista. The operating system trying to protect critical files denies access to them. There is a method how to bypass this mechanism without compromising security. Try to run your application in compatibility mode. When application is running in compatibility mode, read / write operations from / to system folders are redirected to "safe" directories located in C:\Users[Current User]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore.
More info on http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Protecting-System-Files-UAC-Virtualization-Part1.html.

If possible how can one embed PostgreSQL?

If it's possible, I'm interested in being able to embed a PostgreSQL database, similar to sqllite. I've read that it's not possible. I'm no database expert though, so I want to hear from you.
Essentially I want PostgreSQL without all the configuration and installation. If it's possible, tell me how.
Run postgresql in a background process.
Start a separate thread in your application that would start a postgresql server in local mode either by binding it to localhost with some random free port or by using sockets (does windows support sockets?). That should be fairly easy, something like:
system("C:\Program Files\MyApplication\pgsql\postgres.exe -D C:\Documents and Settings\User\Local Settings\MyApplication\database -h 127.0.0.1 -p 12345");
and then just connect to 127.0.0.1:12345.
When your application quits, you can always send a SIGTERM to your thread and then wait a few seconds for postgresql to quit (ie join the thread).
PS: You can also use pg_ctl to control your "embedded" database, even without threads, just do a "pg_ctl start" (with appropriate options) when starting the application and "pg_ctl stop" when quitting it.
You cannot embed it, nor should you try.
For embedding you should use sqlite as you mentioned or firebird rdbms.
Unless you do a major rewrite of code, it is not possible to run Postgres "embedded". Either run it as a separate process or use something else. SQLite is an excellent choice. But there are others. MySQL has an embedded version. See it at http://mysql.com/oem/. Also several java choices, and Mac has Core Data you can write too. Hell, you can even use FoxPro. What OS you on and what services you need from the database?
You can't embed it as a in process type thing like sqlite etc, but you can easily embed it into your application setup using Inno setup at http://www.innosetup.org. Search their mailing list archive and you will find someone did most of the work for you and all you have to to is grab the zipped distro and you can easily have postgresql installed when the user installs your app. You can then use the pg_hba.conf file to restrict the server to local host only. Not a true embedded DB, but it would work.
PostgreSQL is intended to run as a stand-alone server; it's probably possible to embed it if you hack at it hard and long enough, but it would be much easier to just run it as intended in a separate process.
HSQLDB (http://hsqldb.org/) is another db which is easily embedded. Requires Java, but is an excellent and often-used choice for Java applications.
Anyone tried on Mac OS X:
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/bruno.gaufier/xhtml/prod_postgresql.xhtml
http://www.macosxguru.net/article.php?story=20041119135924825
(Of course sqlite would be my embedded db of choice as well)
Well, I know this is a very very very old post, but if anyone has nowadays this question, I would refer to:
You can use containers running Postgres. Here's a post that could be helpful, doing something along this line using R:
https://rsangole.netlify.app/post/2021/08/07/docker-based-rstudio-postgres/?utm_source=pocket_mylist
Take a look at duckdb https://duckdb.org/docs/installation/ It is relatively new and still needs to mature. But it works pretty much like an embedded database ("In-process, serverless"), with bindings for several languages (Python, R, Java, ...)

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