> From: Paul Reeves

Hi,

> The other lack is that of simple language constructs such as
> if..then..else or
> while..do.
>
> Given that InterBase already supports procedural language
> constructs in stored
> procedures and triggers, and given that ISQL already has some
> capabilities such
> as input, shell, set etc., how much work would be involved in
> extending it? Is
> it practical? Is it useful?

It is certainly useful, but I don't think it should be an enhancement to the
database, but an enhancement to the client tools (ISQL etc.)

A number of applications I have started to use, or upgraded to, recently
that use scripts have had the ability to 'embed' Tcl in the actual script
file. I think that something along these lines would be ideal. That way we
could use variables, if..then statements etc. and the Tcl interpreter(?)
would effectively pre-process the script. You can also create macros with
Tcl. I have not used Tcl that much to say whether it is a good choice or
not, but anything similar would be OK (multi-platform, easy to
use/understand, etc.)

> An easy solution to this problem would be to allow SPs to execute DDL. The
> reason for this limitation escapes me, but it is probably a good one.

I think this is a different issue, but is something that I would find
useful. There have been a number of times that I have wanted to set indexes
active/non-active, or create external tables in stored procedures etc.

Cheers

Phil Shrimpton
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