Introducing Ingres Star

This guide describes how to implement and use Ingres^® Star and its related facilities.

Ingres Star

Ingres Ingres Star (formerly Ingres Distributed Option) is a distributed data manager that adds to Ingres a distributed relational database management system capability, which includes distributed access, storage, and processing. You can include multiple hardware and operating systems (mainframe, mid-range, and desktop) and database management systems in this distributed system.

With Ingres Star, you can combine many separate databases into a single view of your data, which you can access just as you would any single, local database. If you install Ingres Net and the Enterprise Access products along with Ingres Star, you get transparent, simultaneous access across multiple nodes, hardware platforms, and software configurations by means of multiple network communication protocols.

Audience

This guide is addressed to two levels of Ingres users:

• For end users, this guide explains the concepts of distributed database processing and how Ingres Star provides access to data in multiple local Ingres databases, and to non-Ingres databases through the use of Enterprise Access products.
• For the system administrator and the database administrator, this guide details how to use and maintain Ingres Star and the catalogs. Individual product guides address installation and maintenance of the Enterprise Access products.

Query Languages

This guide uses the industry standard query language, SQL. QUEL is not supported in Ingres Star.

Installation Considerations

The type and location of the databases you wish to access determine which Ingres products you must install.

• For local data access:

  Ingres by itself works with one database at a time on your own computer. Therefore, to access a single database on a single computer, just install Ingres on your local computer.

• For remote data access:

  When your computer is part of a network, Ingres Net allows you to access a single database stored on another computer from your local computer. Therefore, to access a database on a remote computer, you must install Ingres Net both on your local computer and the remote computer.

  For information, see the System Administrator Guide. For information about using Ingres Net with Ingres Star, see Setup for Remote Database Access.

• For heterogeneous data access:

  The Enterprise Access products allow you to access data stored in non-Ingres databases. Therefore, to access a non-Ingres database, install the appropriate Enterprise Access for that database type. See the guides that are specific to that Enterprise Access.

  Note: If the non-Ingres database is on a remote computer, you must also install Ingres Net.

• For distributed data access:

  Ingres Star gives you access to multiple databases simultaneously. You need not even know where the data you need resides. The other databases and their configurations are invisible to you. You work transparently with Ingres Star distributed database as if it were a single local Ingres database on your own computer.

  Combining Ingres Star with Ingres Net gives you access to remote as well as local databases, no matter where those databases are stored on your network.

  Combining Ingres Star with Enterprise Access products allows you to access both non-Ingres and Ingres databases, or even several different types of non-Ingres databases. For example, you can create a distributed database that contains Ingres, DB2, and IMS data. By joining them together in a single distributed database, you can perform complex operations such as joins and subselects between DB2 and IMS data that would be very difficult without the use of Ingres Star.

  Combining Ingres Star with Ingres Net and Enterprise Access or EDBC products allows you to access both Ingres and non-Ingres databases simultaneously, anywhere on your network.

Setup for Remote Database Access

To work with an Ingres database stored on another computer, the computer on which you are entering commands and the computer that contains the database must be connected by a network. (The computer on which you are entering commands is called the local node and the computer that contains the database is called the remote node.)

To work on an Ingres database on a remote node, the following setup is required:

• Ingres Net must be installed on your local node and on each remote node.
• Either you or the system administrator must use the netutil or ingnet utility to define each remote node that contains a database that you want to access. Defining a remote node gives it a vnode (virtual) name. From then on, you need only specify the vnode name of the remote node and the name of the database. Net handles the details of gaining access to the remote node.
• Ingres Star users must be authorized on the local node as well as each remote node they wish to access, unless installation passwords are used. This authorization is also done through the netutil or ingnet utility. Use netutil or ingnet on your local node to define your login authorization to your account on the remote node. (Alternatively, the system administrator must define your access to a public guest account on that remote node).

  Note: You need to define authorization to your account on a remote node only once. Your authorization remains until you delete it.

  If installation passwords are used, the installation password of a remote node must be entered with netutil or ingnet.

For additional details, see Define User Authorization to Nodes on the Network.

Command Syntax for Accessing a Distributed Database

The syntax for accessing a distributed database by means of Ingres Star is:

IngresCommand [vnode::]distdbname/server_class

• IngresCommand

  Is an Ingres command.

• vnode

  Indicates the name of your distributed database that resides on a remote node.

• /server_class

  Indicates the server class.

  Always use /star, which signifies that you are accessing a distributed database through the Star Server. This requirement applies even for accessing Ingres Enterprise Access databases through Ingres Star.

Examples: Accessing Distributed Databases

To open the Ingres Menu and access a distributed database on your local node, type the following command:

ingmenu distdbname/star

The /star parameter signifies the Star server class.

To open the Ingres Menu and access a distributed database on a remote node whose vnode name is paris, type the following command:

ingmenu paris::distdbname/star

In this case, you must specify both the vnode name of the remote node and the Star server class.

Whether the distributed database is on your local node or on a remote node, once you have accessed the database by means of Ingres Star, you can work on the database as if it were a collection of tables in a single Ingres database.