Hi Joseph,

> Dalton, I really wish your recent series can be compiled into a site
> (preferable www.interbase2000.com) It was like a treasure hunt reading them.
> Thanks.

I have a few more finished articles, and alot of source code. Unfortunately, I
have been hit with a heavy load lately, so my time to put everything together
has been very limited. I am currently working on a new version of WISQL.

It started off as a idea to make WISQL act like a make file. Problem was that
WISQL scripts did not support blobs or inserting descriptions into the database.

I then started looking at a old piece of code that I had from alooooong time
ago. It was a visual designer for databases. It works but is very limited. (a
good concept piece of code). It was designed to only produce sql scripts, so I
was back at a limited WISQL again.

I started talking to Bill King (Ungod on the lists) and Ed Popkov. Ed has been
guiding me on some wish list items and Bill has been modifying a pascal version
of yacc and lex to parse ebnf formated text and produce pascal code that will
parse what ever language extensions we wanted. Thanks to Bill Karwin's work, we
have the base ebnf for Interbase already, I have been extending it to support
the trigger/sp language. I also have the ebnf for the complete SQL 92
standard. I am looking for the ebnf for sql 99 if it exists somewhere.

With the new parser able to act as a extended client to the server, we could (in
theory) use the tool to write anything on the server we want, and by using
Jason's IBO, have the script connect to multiple servers and use transactions.
Combine that with a BLR generator (very far off in the future, I am still
formating and digesting Ann's posting of the documentation) and we have a very
powerful tool that could give us alot the things the wish list has been asking
for.

So far, everybody who has been involved has agreed that this project has to be
done as freeware. That way, everyone can use the tools without any limits
placed on them. (So marathon and other products like them can fully support what
we are doing without endangering thier income).

It is a big project, but it is very possible.

The currently end target projects are as follows.

Script Tool - This project is meant simply to parse a extended IB sql script.
Extract Tool - This project extracts all the metadata from a db and creates a
extended IB sql script.
Compare Tool - This project reads two extended scripts and generates the sql to
morf the one script to the other (there is a tool like this already on the
dunston thomas site - anyone who knows how to get ahold of the author, please
contact me)
RAD - This is a whiteboard tool, this is a design tool, totally unlike
marathon, it is more like visio and you draw and annotate all your designs.

So you can see, we have our hands full. I am thinking of setting up some form
of CVS and maybe it's own news list. So far we are making alot of progress, but
I am running out of time on this.

If you want to be involved, contact me directly (This is very off list in the
initial stages) .

best regards

Dalton