Basic Operation Initially, the server host starts the service by listening on TCP port 1543. When a client host wishes to make use of the service, it establishes a TCP connection with the server host. When the connection is established, the server sends a greeting. An individual command corresponds to single database transaction and elicts a single response indicating the transaction outcome. This avoids the need for transaction rollbacks or error messages indicating which transactions succeed and which did not.
Commands consist of a case-insensitive keyword, possibly followed by one or more arguments.
All commands are terminated by a CRLF pair. Keywords are three or four characters long. Each argument may be up to 40 characters long. This initial specification contains only seven commands, enough only to address the requirements stated above. However, the protocol has been designed with expansion in mind.