1 Introduction

This book describes Mnesia Session. It is an interface to the Mnesia Database Management System and is a part of the Open Telecom Platform (OTP), which is a control system platform for building telecommunications applications.

Mnesia is written in Erlang and intended to be used in conjunction with Erlang applications.

The Mnesia Session application enables access to the Mnesia DBMS from foreign programming languages (i.e. other languages than Erlang). The Mnesia Session interface is defined in IDL (an Interface Definition Language standardized by OMG (the Object Management Group)). Access is enabled via the following protocols:

• IIOP (Internet Inter ORB Protocol) standardized by OMG.
• the proprietary distribution protocol of Erlang erl_interface.

Details of these features are described in the following sections.

1.1 Scope and Purpose

This manual is included in the OTP document set. It describes the syntax, but not the semantics, of how Mnesia is accessed via the Mnesia Session interfaces. Programming constructs are described, and numerous programming examples are included to illustrate the use of Mnesia Session.

1.2 Pre-requisites

Readers of this manual are assumed to be familiar with system development principles and database management systems. Readers are also assumed to be familiar with the Erlang programming language in general and the Mnesia, Orber and IC applications in particular.

1.3 Where to Find More Information

Refer to the following documentation for more information:

• the Mnesia documentation set - (version 3.0 and later)
• the Orber documentation set
• the IC documentation set
• the Reference Manual
• the Installation Guide
• the System Architecture Support Libraries (SASL) User Guide
• the OS Specific Parts User Guide