NoSQL Tutorial

NoSQL can handle data in different way, called list format. A sample table may be:

CODE    ACM003
NAME    Bart Simpson
PHONE   1-555-5432-321
EMAIL   bart@springfield.org
CODE    ACM004
NAME    Wiley The Coyote"
PHONE   1-800-ILLGETIT
EMAIL   wiley@looneys.com

Yes, you're right! This is the same way the edit command displays data. Although list tables aren't performing at all, in my opinion they are a good way to insert new data into tables. It's handy creating a program that can output this fashion. An example is shown in Listing 1.

Okay, this is not a “state of the art” shell program, but this example may show that the complete operation is easy with every language, even the shell.

There are a couple of things I would like to emphasize about the above code. How can a list be merged with a real table? The command listtotable does the job for you, as you probably guessed looking at the pipe, converting the list format to the table one. A reverse command, tabletolist, exists as well.

Please notice the beginning and ending newlines, as well as the tabs between field name and value, which appear in the print statement: these are required in order to create the correct list structure.

The list structure, as well as table structure, are well documented in the Chapter 2 of the NoSQL reference you will find in /usr/local/doc/nosql/doc.

Now, let's have a business example? A complete catalog was created using a NoSQL table (see the catalog.rdb file below) and published on the Web dynamically. Every two days, we receive orders from our customers that they have usually created with Excel and exported, at our request, in a coma-separated file.

PRID    DESC                             PRICE
------  -------------------------       ------
PRD001  Acme glue for RoadRunners        30.00
PRD002  Acme TNT                        150.00
PRD003  Carrots                           5.00
PRD004  Acme toolbox                     75.00
The file (sample_order.txt below) we receive has the following
format: requester's unique code, Product ID, Quantity.

ACM004,PRD001,5
ACM004,PRD002,30
ACM004,PRD004,1

Now from a shell or command line we run:

export TMPFILE=`mktemp -q /tmp/$0.XXXXXX` ; cat sample_order.txt | \
perl -e 'print "CODE\tPROD\tQTY\n"; print "----\t----\t---\n"; \
while(
catalog.rdb | \
nosql addcol SUBTOTAL | nosql compute 'SUBTOTAL = QTY*PRICE' > $TMPFILE ; \
echo "Please bill to:" ; echo "---------------" ; echo ""; cat
$TMPFILE |\
nosql join -j CODE - customer.rdb | nosql column NAME PHONE EMAIL | \
nosql body | head -1 ; echo "";echo "" ; cat $TMPFILE | nosql rmcol CODE | \
nosql print -w; echo ""; echo -n "Total due: "; cat $TMPFILE | \
nosql subtotal -T SUBTOTAL | nosql body ; rm $TMPFILE

Please bill to:
---------------
Wiley The Coyote        1-800-ILLGETIT  wiley@looneys.com
PROD   QTY DESC                       PRICE SUBTOTAL
------ --- ------------------------- ------ --------
PRD001   5 Acme glue for RoadRunners  30.00      150
PRD002  30 Acme TNT                  150.00     4500
PRD004   1 Acme toolbox               75.00       75
Total due: 4725

I know it's a bit hermetic, so let's have a closer look: the explanation is divided in four sections to be easily read. I will keep out the echo commands which are quite obvious.