DbConsole


Author: Dale Anson
Version: 2.0.1

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do the \ls, \lt, and \lc commands cause a null pointer when connected to Postgresql?
Upgrading to the latest driver should fix this problem. The download page is at http://jdbc.postgresql.org/download.html

Why doesn't the \color command work on Windows?
I don't know. It has been reported to work on Windows 98, but not on Windows 2000 or XP, with either cmd.exe or command.com and with ansi.sys loaded. If you're using Cygwin on Windows 2000, you can get \color to work by piping output through "cat", e.g. java -jar DbConsole_2.0.1.jar | cat, however, if you do, you lose the command history. A better option if you have cygwin is to use "rxvt".

I can't find the configuration files for DbConsole. Where are they stored?
DbConsole doesn't use a configuration file, instead, it uses Java's preferences API. How this is implemented depends on your operating system. On Windows, the settings are stored in the Windows registry, on Linux and Solaris, the settings are stored in a subdirectory of your home directory. You shouldn't manipulate the settings by hand anyway. You can make all edits in DbConsole itself.

However, if you want to export your configurations so you can use them on another machine, save them for backup, etc, then you can have DbConsole write out your configuration to a file. Use the \exportconfig command. You can export a single configuration or all your configurations at once. The \importconfig is the command to use to import a configuration file. Note that the \importconfig command doesn't remove any existing configurations, but will update a configuration with the same name as one in the configuration file.

I've forgotten the password for the user I use to connect to my database. Can I see it somewhere?
No. DbConsole encrypts the password before it stores it, and only decrypts it to actually contact the database server. It is not visible in plain text anywhere.

I'm concerned that DbConsole saves the password that I use to connect with the database. How secure is my password?
DbConsole uses Triple-DES as the encryption algorithm to store passwords. The source code for the encryption is available. You're welcome to inspect that code, I think you'll find that it is a fairly standard implementation that is adequate for most usage, but certainly not unbreakable. If you're really concerned, then don't enter a password when you're setting up the database. DbConsole will prompt you for the password if a stored password is not found when you try to connect to the database.

How do I turn off autocommit? Prior to version 1.2.8, you couldn't. This feature has been added as of version 1.2.8. Use the \autocommit command to toggle autocommit mode. By default, autocommit is on. So the first time you do \autocommit, autocommit will be turned off. Then use the \commit command to actually do the commit. Toggling back to autocommit on does NOT perform a commit! This means that you can toggle autocommit off, do some sql, toggle autocommit on, then do some more sql which will be automatically committed, then do the \commit command to actually commit the sql that you ran while autocommit was off. So toggling back to autocommit on does not automatically commit the sql you ran while it was off. You still have to explicitly do the \commit command.