README

`sql2textfs' is a FUSE filesystem for mounting database tables as text files.
Written by Kimon Kontosis in year 2013 for his major paper in
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications,
National & Kapodistrian University of Athens.
Copyright (C) 2013, Kimon Kontosis


The program `sql2textfs` is a custom file system based on FUSE that
lets the user mount a database and view all its tables as files of a 
directory of the filesystem in a POSIX system.
The databased tables are viewed as files but in a specific format:
All table entries are converted into lines in a file of text.
Columns are separated by tab, so all the data of the table is in
a tab-delimited text file. The file format is a form of CSV format.
The table header is in the first line of the file. It is a tab-delimited
line containing the name and some type-properties of each column.
The file system sql2textfs relies on `libsql2text` and `libretranse`
which are parts of the same project. `libretranse` is a runtime
library that parses and runs programs written in `retranse' - a language 
based on regular expressions. The configuration file of sql2textfs, 
which is written in retranse, is essential since much of the
convertion functionality lies there and each database type requires
a special configuration file.
The project sql2textfs, when built, produces the binary file 
`sql2textmount' which is the program that mounts databases into a 
directory given a connection string.


sql2textfs is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or
later. See LICENSE


For sql2textfs documentation see doc/MANUAL

For INSTALLATION instructions see doc/INSTALL