Chapter 1. Introduction

The “shell” is your command interpreter. On Unix, this is typically a program such as sh, csh, or bash. On Windows, the equivalent program is command.com or cmd.exe, typically run in a console window.

When you enter a command or statement shown in an example, do not type the prompt shown in the example.

Sometimes, what appears on one line in a console window cannot be represented in the documentation on a single line. In cases such as this the character ‘»’ is used. For example:

Please specify the directory where the MySQL Enterprise Monitor »
 will be installed.

Where Unix commands are concerned, the continuation character ‘\’ is used. Doing this allows commands to be copied and pasted to the command line verbatim. For example:

shell> /opt/mysql/enterprise/agent/bin/mysql-monitor-agent -f \
 /opt/mysql/enterprise/agent/etc/mysql-monitor-agent.ini

SQL keywords are not case sensitive and may be written in either case. This document uses uppercase.

In syntax descriptions, square brackets (‘[’ and ‘]’) indicate optional words or clauses. For example, in the following statement, IF EXISTS is optional:

DROP TABLE [IF EXISTS] tbl_name

When a syntax element consists of a number of alternatives, the alternatives are separated by vertical bars (‘|’). When one member from a set of choices may be chosen, the alternatives are listed within square brackets (‘[’ and ‘]’):

TRIM([[BOTH | LEADING | TRAILING] [remstr] FROM] str)

When one member from a set of choices must be chosen, the alternatives are listed within braces (‘{’ and ‘}’):

{DESCRIBE | DESC} tbl_name [col_name | wild]

An ellipsis (...) indicates the omission of a section of a statement, typically to provide a shorter version of more complex syntax. For example, INSERT ... SELECT is shorthand for the form of INSERT statement that is followed by a SELECT statement.

An ellipsis can also indicate that the preceding syntax element of a statement may be repeated. In the following example, multiple reset_option values may be given, with each of those after the first preceded by commas:

RESET reset_option [,reset_option] ...

Commands for setting shell variables are shown using Bourne shell syntax. For example, the sequence to set the CC environment variable and run the configure command looks like this in Bourne shell syntax:

shell> CC=gcc ./configure

If you are using csh or tcsh, you must issue commands somewhat differently:

shell> setenv CC gcc
shell> ./configure

Throughout this document the term ‘Unix’ is used to describe any Unix or Unix-like operating system. For an up-to-date list of operating systems supported by the MySQL Enterprise Monitor please see the MySQL Enterprise web site.