Here a question I presume someone can easily answer and save me some tedious scanning of text:
I have never used mySQL before, but I am going to (more or less) have to soon because I'm learning "ruby on rails". Anyway, the little project I'm doing to learn ruby syntax and usage is not a web app, but it could use a db to store data between invocations*. In the past, with perl, I've used BerkeleyDB and more recently "Storable" for this. I've also used them to do cgi web stuff and they work fine for that, which is part of the reason I've never bothered with mySQL.
Anyway, since I will have to be learning mySQL anyway, I was wondering if it could be applied this way -- eg, *not in a web context*, but just to create database files that could be used by an executable. From the looks of their site, I am guessing no, so either I have to turn this into a web app (possible) or else find an equivalent to BDB or Store for ruby. Which might be even better if I could then use that while learning rails instead. Or else just use a text file, but since I should really focus on "normative practices" that seems silly.
*nicer and easier than parsing a text file in and out
[later] looks like SQlite is more the thing for this...