aurum is a bash-like shell for interacting with database servers. It's still very much in an alpha state of development and is mostly infrastructure at this point with very few useful commands. The eventual goal is for it to provide a concise alternative to SQL for common database tasks.

It's possible that aurum will work with versions preceding those listed below, but they are the ones I've tested it with. I'll consider patches to allow it to function on older versions within reason.

• Python 2.7.2+
• SQLAlchemy 0.7.6+
• A supported database server and corresponding Python driver

The aurum executable will look for configuration file at ~/.aurum. Here are the sections and settings that are currently supported.

[general]
prompt = aurum> 

[dsn]
name = protocol://username:password@host/database

The prompt setting is similar in concept to the $PSO variable of bash, but currenty only supports string literals.

Each line in the [dsn] section provides a DSN for a particular server and database with a shorthand name for later reference.

For now, clone the repo and execute ./bin/aurum with no arguments. Eventually, this will support specifying a DSN name to automatically connect to it. This will place you in the "root" from which you can list available DSNs and their subentities using the ls command and eventually you'll be able to navigate between them using the cd command.

Commands exist as classes in lib/aurum/commands that extend from aurum.commands.Command and implement any of its do_* methods, which represent particular contexts in which the command can be invoked such as when no DSN is active or when a specific DSN, database, table, or column is active.

A do_all method is also supported, which is executed if it exists when none of the other do_* methods declared by Command are overridden. This is useful when the command operation does not vary based on the context.

Note: These do_* methods are processed like those of any Cmd subclass. Specifically, if they return a True value, the shell will terminate. The base Command class and exit.Exit Command subclass are good examples of this behavior being used.

This was partly influenced by the use of SQLAlchemy for the project. One of the original goals of the craft of alchemy was to transmute base metals into noble metals like gold or, in Latin, "aurum," the word from which the chemical element takes its symbol Au. Another influence was my eventual hope for this project, that it become as useful as its name implies.