This chapter provides a brief overview of some essential ISAM library functions and illustrates how to use them to create and manipulate a database. The example programs in this chapter are written in C. If you prefer to use C++, see the chapter titled "ISAMCPP Tutorial". The example programs are included on disk.
Any program file that contains calls to the ISAM library functions must include the header file named ISAM.H. This header file defines the prototypes for all of the ISAM functions, and defines constants that are used by these functions. The program must be linked with both the ISAM and CBT libraries, since the ISAM library functions make calls to the CBT library functions.
Let's create a simple database for storing information about books. For each book, we'll store the title of the book, the author's name, and the book's ISBN number.