If you wish to try out Mimer at home you can go to www.mimer.com and download a Mimer development version for, among other choices, Windows or Linux. If you install this on your own computer at home, you can create your own databases, or you can connect to our Mimer server and do the lab assignments from home.
To connect to a Mimer database, you must first tell the local Mimer installation that the database exists.
Click on Start, then on Program, then on Mimer SQL Engine 9.1, and choose Mimer Administrator from the menu. When Mimer Administrator has started, choose the tab Remote to register a remote database:
Click on Add, and in the Window that appears, enter the name of the database that you have been given. The Node name should be basen.oru.se. Be sure to uncheck the check box for Create System Data Source.
(You should use the database name dbk, not dbk17 as in the picture!)
When you click OK, the new database will show up in the Mimer Administrator windows. You can now close that window.
(Remember, you should be using the database name dbk, not dbk17 as in the picture!)
If you get an error message saying Error creating data source something, you forgot to uncheck Create System Data Source. Mimer will work anyway.
(Again: you will connect to the database called dbk, not dbk17 as in the picture!)
Choose the correct database, and click on OK. A text window will open, where you can enter your user name and your password (which you will get from your teacher), and then type in SQL queries. Queries can span several rows, and end with a semi-colon (;).
(In the picture, the DBA, who has the user name sysadm, has logged in. You should use the name you got from your teacher, for example dbk17.)
(You can also open the ODBC administrator window from the Start meny by clicking on Start, then on Program, then on Mimer SQL Engine 9.1, then on Utilities, and then choose ODBC Administrator from the menu.)
Click on the tab Användar-DSN to create a user data source. A user data source can only be used by the user who created it, as opposite to a system data source, that can be used by anyone.
Click on Lägg till (in English: Add) to add a new user data source.
You must now choose which driver (Swedish: drivrutin) to use. ODBC allows you to communicate with many types of database management systems, but you must have a driver for each type of DBMS. Since you will be working with a Mimer database, we choose the Mimer driver, and click on Slutför (in English: Finish).
We must also give a name to the data source, and choose which of the Mimer databases that we wish this data source to be connected to.
Finally, click OK, and see how the new data source shows up in the ODBC administration window.
Click on OK to close the window.
(This tool may or may not be installed on the computer you are using. If it isn't, you'll have to use BSQL, or some other tool.)
Start the query builder from the start menu: select Program, then Mimer SQL Engine 9.1, and finally SQL Query Builder. The query builder window opens:
Note that the query builder uses the data sources defined for ODBC, not the databases defined in Mimer Administrator, so to use the query builder you have to create an ODBC data source for your Mimer database. Read more in the section ODBC Data Sources above.
Double-click on the database you want to connect to. You will be asked for a user name (which could be sysadm, or someting else) and a password.
(Remember: The database is called dbk, not dbk17 as in the picture, and the user name is something like dbk17, not sysadm.)
Click on OK to login to the selected database.
When you have connected to the database, you can type queries in the editor area to the right, and run them by clicking on the Run button.
Among other things, you can look up the exact syntax for each SQL command.
