Client Interfaces

The following client interfaces are available with MonetDB:

• mclient command-line interface

  Connects the user to a MonetDB server via the command line.

• JDBC-based command-line interface

  Modeled after mclient but implemented in Java using the JDBC Driver.

• Database connectivity APIs

  ODBC, JDBC, pymonetdb, etc.

• Graphical user interface (GUI) SQL clients

  Third-party GUI SQL clients.

The specialized command-line utility msqldump can be used to dump the contents of a MonetDB database to a file that can later be used to restore the database or initialize a new instance. To ensure the database is resilient against hardware and operating system failures, such as the famous out-of-memory (OOM) error, it is good practice to regularly perform a backup. For more details, see Backup and Recovery.

Some of the tools and libraries, in particular mclient, msqldump and the Java- and Python connectors, allow bundling of all connection parameters into a URL. For example, monetdb://localhost:50000/demo?user=monetdb&password=monetdb. For more details, see MonetDB URLs.

The MonetDB codebase can also be embedded in a number of programming languages to benefit from a single-user, high-performance interface. See the description in the Developers Guide.