Connection specifications
A database connection is a connection from VA Smalltalk to a database through a database manager. You can establish more than one database connection at a time if your DBMS allows multiple connections.
To keep track of your database connections, VA Smalltalk uses something called connection specifications. A connection specification associates an alias, which is a name that you make up to refer to your database, with a VA Smalltalk database manager and a database name or ODBC data source. You might use the alias SampleConSpec, for example, to refer to a connection to the SAMPLE database through DB2(R). A connection specification serves several purposes:
•It points to the database manager and database to use for database operations.
•It lets you develop your application independent of a specific database. This independence is helpful if you need to use one database to develop and test your application, and another for production use of your application.
•It keeps track of whether or not you are connected to your database manager.
You can define a connection specification once and use it over and over again in more than one application. If you change the database that an alias points to, then you can automatically update all parts that use that alias.
Last modified date: 01/29/2015