Setting up the C++ SDK

The Vertica C++ Software Development Kit (SDK) is distributed as part of the server installation. It contains the source and header files you need to create your UDx library. For examples that you can compile and run, see Downloading and running UDx example code.

Requirements

At a minimum, install the following on your development machine:

• devtoolset-7 package (CentOS) or GCC package (Debian), including GCC version 7 or later and an up-to-date libstdc++ package.

  Note

  Vertica has not tested UDx builds that use GCC versions later than GCC 8.

• g++ and its associated toolchain, such as ld. Some Linux distributions package g++ separately from GCC.

• A copy of the Vertica SDK.

You must compile with a std flag value of c++11 or later.

The following optional software packages can simplify development:

• make, or some other build-management tool.

• gdb, or some other debugger.

• Valgrind, or similar tools that detect memory leaks.

If you want to use any third-party libraries, such as statistical analysis libraries, you need to install them on your development machine. If you do not statically link these libraries into your UDx library, you must install them on every node in the cluster. See Compiling your C++ library for details.

SDK files

The SDK files are located in the sdk subdirectory under the root Vertica server directory (usually, /opt/vertica/sdk). This directory contains a subdirectory, include, which contains the headers and source files needed to compile UDx libraries.

There are two files in the include directory you need when compiling your UDx:

• Vertica.h is the main header file for the SDK. Your UDx code needs to include this file in order to find the SDK's definitions.

• Vertica.cpp contains support code that needs to be compiled into the UDx library.

Much of the Vertica SDK API is defined in the VerticaUDx.h header file (which is included by the Vertica.h file). If you're curious, you might want to review the contents of this file in addition to reading the API documentation.

Finding the current SDK version

You must develop your UDx using the same SDK version as the database in which you plan to use it. To display the SDK version currently installed on your system, run the following command in vsql:

=> SELECT sdk_version();

Running the examples

You can download the examples from the GitHub repository (see Downloading and running UDx example code). Compiling and running the examples helps you to ensure that your development environment is properly set up.

To compile all of the examples, including the Java examples, issue the following command in the Java-and-C++ directory under the examples directory:

$ make