MDI: Mathematica database interface for the MFEDB

We describe a new interface for the Magnetic Fusion Energy Database, MFEDB, which uses Mathematica reg-sign as a front end. MDI is a Mathematica package that defines a basic set of MFEDB access functions. The package will also accept standard SQL queries. Each function returns Mathematica-style lists, which can then be manipulated with any of the Mathematica functions. MDI also provides some utility functions for plotting and analyzing the data. The MDI package essentially makes the MFEDB an extension of Mathematica. The user may use any of the many Mathematica front-ends including telnet, X-Windows, or a notebook. The mdi.m package may be obtained by anonymous FTP from the MFEDB site or by use of netmfe, and E-mail database interface. MDI is a example of distributed computing. Behind the user interface, MDI calls an RPC client program that communicates with an RPC server on the MFEDB computer. It relies on the network communication capabilities of Mathematica to connect the user to a workstation running the Mathematica kernel. The Mathematica kernel is then connected to the MFEDB host workstation by a client/server pair of RPC processes. If the Mathematica kernel is to be run on the users' machine, the RPC client program must also be obtained and installed. The MDI RPC server is also available for users who would like to provide their own client software. The server returns ASCII tables from standards queries and may be accessed and processed by any program on the internet that has access to RPC services