Doesn't MySql listen on a port? Is that protocol documented? I've used postgresql that way from Haskell.
Yes It's usually operated through a TCP/IP (port 3306), and I'd contemplated this, but I was hoping for something standard and off the shelf.
Another thought, which I hesitate to even mention, would be to call the commandline tool via System.Cmd, pipe the results to a file, and read the file, and parse the results. Slow and ugly, but you could have it working in an hour.
Hadn't even thought of that, must be my clean upbringing. Somone on the haskell list pointed out that ODBC works so I can just use that. It's a bit less tidy since I'll have to define ODBC data sources instead of connecting direct, but I'll live (atleast until I [or better, somone else] get around to fixing the library problem) C