NAME

       kdb-introduction - introduction to kdb

       Elektra  solves  the  task of accessing the configuration storage. Additionally, a tooling
       gathered around Elektra helps with  minor  problems  that  appear  every  day.  Maybe  the
       administrator  needs a cron job that periodically changes the settings of a service. Maybe
       the user wants to have an overview of  the  whole  configuration  to  learn  what  can  be
       tweaked.  Maybe the developer needs to fully export the configuration the program had when
       a failure  occurred.  These  tasks  have  in  common  that  they  become  trivial  once  a
       programmatic access to a global key database exists.

       In  this  subsection  we  give  an  overview  of  the command-line tool kdb. It is part of
       Elektra´s environment and  performs  the  mentioned  tasks.  kdb  consists  of  individual
       subprograms.  The  programs  are  independent,  but can access a shared part that provides
       functionality too specific to be in the library -- for example, pretty printing  of  error
       messages  and  warnings.  Most parts of this suite are short programs which basically call
       kdbGet(), do something with  the  data  structure  and  eventually  write  it  back  using
       kdbSet(). Note that the command-line tool kdb should not be confused with the class KDB.

       kdb  was  rewritten  as part of this thesis with a new architecture. Now every part of the
       application suite will be able to accept its own command line arguments and will have  its
       own documentation. Also a completely new feature mount arose.

       Only a few commands are enough for daily use. We can retrieve a key by:

           > kdb get user/keyname

       We store a key permanently with a value given by:

           > kdb set user/keyname value

       We list all available keys arranged below a key by:

           > kdb ls user/keyname

       Many  other  tools  beside  kdb are possible. They may be more convenient depending on the
       situation. Preference dialogues, graphical editors, web-interfaces and  web  services  can
       all provide access to the global key database.

                                          November 2015                       KDB-INTRODUCTION(1)