After the checkin by Martin (about giving -u and -P default values on MapiClient), I had to laugh loudly for a minute (or two) after which I had to frown, thinking about the security aspect of this change. Not that it changes much, but being a little minded towards a better situation is not a bad thing IMHO. (Also for the reputation of monet by itself for the outside world)
Because I regularly get tired of typing long command line arguments as well, I propose the following solution, which might fit all kinds of tastes.
What if we would store some preferences we have in a file ~/.monetdb or something which can be shared by various applications, like MapiClient, JdbcClient, Mserver itself, and maybe any more...
The file would be simply a properties file containing something like username=monetdb password=monetdb language=sql startscript=~/monetdb/start_sql
which would instruct MapiClient to use sql language with username + pass monetdb and tell Mserver when it starts to load the script ~/monetdb/start_sql so I for instance would not have to type 'module(sql_server);' anymore.
Of course command line options override these defaults in this .monetdb file. It is up to the user to chmod it to 600.
How about this idea?
Good idea. And the file does already exist: it's called "monet.conf", and its default location (on a unix system) is /etc/monet.conf . There was a lengthy discussion about whether and which (alternative) user default locations to use (~/.monet.conf , ./.monet.conf), but I have to admit, I don't recall the final outcome. In any case, Mserver has the -c/--config option to expicitely specify an alternative monet.conf ; other tools (MapiClient, JdbcClient, etc.) do/should provide a similar set of commandline options and use MonetDB/src/common/monet_options.{mx,py}.in to parse them conveniently. Maybe, we should also add a MonetDB/src/common/monet_options.java.in? ! Let's make sure that we use the same "Look&Feel" for all our tools ! (Which means: If you change one, be sure to keep the others in sync! If you add one, be sure it follows the "rules"!) See MonetDB/conf/monet.conf.in and MonetDB/src/common/monet_options.*.in for further details. Stefan -- | Dr. Stefan Manegold | mailto:Stefan.Manegold@cwi.nl | | CWI, P.O.Box 94079 | http://www.cwi.nl/~manegold/ | | 1090 GB Amsterdam | Tel.: +31 (20) 592-4212 | | The Netherlands | Fax : +31 (20) 592-4312 |