DBToy

DBToy is a powerful fuse-based filesystem designed for Linux users. It offers an amazing feature that lets you explore the contents of a relational database through a set of directories and XML files. Essentially, DBToy provides a directory for every schema in your database, with each schema containing a directory for each table. The table directories have files containing table definitions and relevant data.

Compiling and using the module and the daemon is easy, thanks to the instructions provided in the readme file that comes with the source distribution. To use DBToy, you need to ensure that your rdbms server is running and reachable from your Linux box then modprobe fuse kernel module. Next, run "dbtoy -u username -p password mountpoint," where "dbtoy" without any arguments shows you help. Finally, walk through your filesystem and browse the contents.

Each schema has its directory, and it contains one subdirectory for each table. Glancing inside each directory reveals two files, one with the description of the datatypes and another with the data. You can "cat mountpoint/schemaN/tableM/types" to see a description of the table, or look at the data. For example, in the mountpoint, you'll see:

```
+------schema1
....
+------schemaN
|
+-----table1
.....
+-----tableM
|
+-----data
+-----types
```

DBToy currently only supports XML output formats. If you are feeling adventurous, you can experiment with the query file feature by running "cat data?col=val," where 'col' is a valid column name and 'val is a feasible value for col (quoting strings is crucial!).

To use DBToy, you need to have the following requirements: Filesystem in Userspace and MySQL.

The latest release of DBToy has a couple of new features worth mentioning. Firstly, the "-i" option now works as expected, and secondly, performance improvements with PostgreSQL have been achieved using prepared statements.