




 
The initialization of the chosen database type is achieved by calling
 sql:initialize-database-type
 with the appropriate value of 
database-type
. In an application, this step should be done at runtime. Where multiple database types are supported, it is possible to initialize more than one database type if needed (by making multiple calls to 
initialize-database-type
).
The following functions and variables are relevant to initialization:
*default-database-type*
 specifies the default type of database. The possible values are shown in the 
database-type
 column of .
The function 
initialize-database-type
 initializes a database type according to the value of its 
database-type
 argument, which defaults to the value of 
*default-database-type*
.
A sample code sequence for initializing Common SQL to work with an ODBC database, using the above functions and variables, is as follows:
(require "odbc")
(setf sql:*default-database-type* :odbc)
(sql:initialize-database-type)
You can find which database types have been initialized by the value of the variable 
*initialized-database-types*
.