SIMPLE RELATIONAL DATABASE TEXT FORMAT FOR DEVELOPING, DESCRIBING AND EXCHANGING OVER A NETWORK

Abstract

There is no simple enough text format to describe together the data and the schema of relational database. A commaseparated values (CSV) files are used to represent tabular data. But CSV not describe a relational database schema thus it cannot represent database in complete. New text format for describing database can be CSV files with a simple name convention for naming directories, files, and table columns. The purpose of this work – to give the basic definitions of this format so that on the one hand it was quite simple, and on the other quite complete. The main idea of this format is to store the data itself, as well as the database schema, together in CSV files. Specifically, information about the database schema, such as the column name, its type, whether it is a key, etc., is encoded in the column name CSV tables. Also, the name of the directory where the CSV files are located is the name of the database, and the names of the CSV files themselves are the names of the database tables. The article considers an example that contains the main features of a relational database – tabular representation, primary key, foreign key. It is shown that this database is completely described by the new format. Converters are required to use the new format to exchange databases between different databases. Conventional tools for working with CSV files, which are supported by many databases, are not able to convert the database in new format to another format. To verify the correctness of this format, a simple converter was implemented to convert databases from this format to the Maria DB format and vice versa. As a result of testing the converter it was possible to show that this format is quite suitable for describing together the data and the scheme of the relational database. These results indicate that this format is quite suitable for creating simple databases, using this format as an intermediate for the transfer of databases between different types of ones and so on.