Getting Help

The BDB XML shell has a built in help facility, simply type help at the command line:

Note

The text displayed by the help command changes frequently, and so what you see in your version of the BDB XML shell may differ from what is shown below.

dbxml> help

Command Summary
---------------

#                - Comment. Does nothing
abort            - Aborts the current transaction
addAlias         - Add an alias to the default container
addIndex         - Add an index to the default container
append           - Append to nodes specified in the query expression
commit           - Commits the current transaction, and starts a new one
compactContainer - Compact a container to shrink it's size
contextQuery     - Execute query expression using the last results as the 
                   context item
cquery           - Execute an expression in the context of the default 
                   container
createContainer  - Creates a new container, which becomes the default 
                   container
debug            - Debug command -- internal use only
delIndex         - Delete an index from the default container
echo             - Echo to output
getDocuments     - Gets document(s) by name from default container
getMetaData      - Get a metadata item from the named document
help             - Print help information.  Use 'help commandName' for extended 
                   help
info             - Get info on default container
insertAfter      - Insert new content after nodes selected by the query 
                   expression
insertBefore     - Insert new content before nodes selected by the query 
                   expression
listIndexes      - List all indexes in the default container
lookupEdgeIndex  - Performs an edge index lookup in the default container
lookupIndex      - Performs an index lookup in the default container
lookupStats      - Look up index statistics on the default container
openContainer    - Opens a container, and uses it as the default container
preload          - Pre-loads (opens) a container
prepare          - Prepare the given query expression as the default pre-parsed 
                   query
print            - Prints most recent results, optionally to a file
putDocument      - Insert a document into the default container
query            - Execute the given query expression, or the default 
                   pre-parsed query
queryPlan        - Prints the query plan for the specified query expression
quit             - Exit the program
reindexContainer - Reindex a container, optionally changing index type
removeAlias      - Remove an alias from the default container
removeContainer  - Removes a container
removeDocument   - Remove a document from the default container
removeNodes      - Remove content from documents specified by the query 
                   expression
renameNodes      - Rename nodes specified by the query expression
run              - Runs the given file as a script
setBaseUri       - Set/get the base uri in the default context
setIgnore        - Tell the shell to ignore script errors
setLazy          - Sets lazy evaluation on or off in the default context
setMetaData      - Set a metadata item on the named document
setNamespace     - Create a prefix->namespace binding in the default 
                   context
setProjection    - Enables or disables the use of the document projection
                   optimization
setQueryTimeout  - Set a query timeout in seconds in the default context
setReturnType    - Sets the return type on the default context
setTypedVariable - Set a variable to the specified type in the default 
                   context
setVariable      - Set a variable in the default context
setVerbose       - Set the verbosity of this shell
sync             - Sync current container to disk
time             - Wrap a command in a wall-clock timer
transaction      - Create a transaction for all subsequent operations to 
                   use
updateNodes      - Update node content based on query expression and new 
                   content
upgradeContainer - Upgrade a container to the current container format 

Any given command has additional detailed help. For example:

dbxml> help createContainer
            
createContainer -- Creates a new container, which becomes the default 
container

Usage: createContainer <containerName> [n|in|d|id] [[no]validate]
Creates a new default container; the old default is closed.
The default is to create a node storage container, with node indexes.
A second argument of "d" creates a Wholedoc storage container, and
"id" creates a document storage container with node indexes.
A second argument of "n" creates a node storage container, and
"in" creates a node storage container with node indexes.
The optional third argument indicates whether or not to validate
documents on insertion
A containerName of "" creates an in-memory container.
This command uses the XmlManager::createContainer() method.  

The help text has valuable information about the command and the API calls that are used to implement a particular command. This helps you to find the relevant section of the API documentation where more detail is available and also serves as a way to explore a commonly used subset of the API calls in an interactive fashion.