Greetings fellow monks,

I have an interesting dilemma; one which could be written up under Perl's "too many good options to solve a simple problem" index. I've been playing around with DBI and DBD::ODBC to run queries off an Access database living in Win32. All's well and good here except that I'd like to have an equivalent "system" that'll run on both Win32 and UNIX.

What I'm asking specifically is this: What database style, in your opinion, is the "best" when it comes to the following requirements?

  1. Uses only a single file per database, despite multiple internal tables
  2. Lives as a stand-alone file; doesn't require an RDBMS install
  3. Allows for SQL querying (via DBI or other is fine)
  4. Supports stored table relationships
  5. Supports column data typing
  6. Supports a "decent" level of normalization

Right now, I'm less concerned with what modules I'm going to use to get at this database than I am about deciding on the database type. If I could wave a magic wand, I'd love to have a MySQL database live as a single file apart from the MySQL system. Obviously, my requirement to have this as a single file rather than a system is going to cut into speed, functionality, and a few other things, but I'm willing to make that sacrifice.

Up 'til now, I've been using either text files, CVS, or XML with DBD::AnyData or similar. I'd like something that's just a simple and "isolated" from the OS/box/system, but houses its data better.

Am I just dreaming? Or does such a thing exist? If not, any ideas as to where I should go or where I should look for ideas? Thanks.

-gryphon
code('Perl') || die;

In reply to Single file RDBMS w/o system install by gryphon

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