Introduction

The Feature Data Objects (FDO) API provides access to data in a data store. A provider is a specific implementation of the FDO API that provides access to data in a particular data store. The FDO Provider for MySQL provides FDO with access to a MySQL-based data store.

The FDO Provider for MySQL API provides custom commands that are specifically designed to work with the FDO API. For example, using these commands, you can do the following:

• Gather information about a provider.
• Transmit client services exceptions.
• Get lists of accessible data stores.
• Create connection objects.
• Create and execute spatial queries.

There is also support for spatial data types.

The MySQL architecture supports different storage engines. Choose an engine as needed, depending on its characteristics and capabilities, such as the following:

• MyISAM is a disk-based storage engine. It does not support transactions.
• InnoDB is a disk-based storage engine. It has full ACID transaction capability.
• Memory (Heap) is a storage engine utilizing only RAM. It is very fast.
• BDB is the Berkley DB storage engine. It supports transactions.
• NDB is the MySQL Cluster storage engine.
• MERGE is a variation of MyISAM. A MERGE table is a collection of identical MyISAM tables, which means that all tables have the same columns, column types, indexes, and so on.

For more information, see The Essential FDO (FET_TheEssentialFDO.pdf) and the FDO Developer's Guide (FDG_FDODevGuide.pdf).