At 09:41 AM 5/2/2000 -0700, Jason Wharton wrote:

> >Or, how about extending "external tables" so they can read XML as a table?
> >That becomes a more useful import/export utility.
>
>I say make this a generic module where plug-ins could be adapted. Of course
>the external table syntax would have to be modified as well as perhaps even
>a new metadata item to track the plug-ins similar to how the UDF's are
>tracked.
>
>Then the XML freaks could write theirs, the delimited ASCII folks plug in
>theirs, the ACCESS people plug in theirs, etc.
>
>Make it generic so that we can just "plug-in" whatever data types we want.

I'm sure this has serious stability and performance implications, but if
Interbase could "tie-in" heterogeneous data sources and run queries and
stored procs against them it would be a very attractive feature.

I don't know what would be involved in adding an OLE DB interface, but it
would make it easier to drop Interbase into some "legacy" environments. ;-)

>FWIW,
>Jason Wharton
>InterBase Developer Initiative
>jwharton@...
>
>InterBase will be the database of the new millennium.