Summary

The instance is the fundamental unit of administration and deployment in SQL-NS. An instance serves as a container for a group of related applications, and every application belongs to some instance. Each SQL-NS instance is an isolated entity and can be configured and administered separately from all other instances.

To create an instance, you write an ICF: an XML document that describes the instance and the applications within it. Using tools provided by SQL-NS, you can create and register a new instance. Creating the instance involves reading the ICF and building the database structures required to run and manage the instance. Registering the instance configures the host computer to run the SQL-NS execution engine for the instance.

It's important to go through the steps in this chapter once to understand what they actually do. However, in practice, you'll usually automate these steps in scripts and probably won't think about them much.