Hi Jim,
I agree that it is not necessarily and easy or even a recommended
option in many situations, particularly for performing batch inserts.
However, the biggest use of this I believe would be for database
metadata manipulation.

I have found in the past that scripts which work using one tool (ISQL,
IBConsole etc) fail on another. Making the engine perform this task
would stop errors like this occuring. (A similar and related problem
occurs with metadata extraction tools.)

As for the batch insert problem, one option for this would be to
implement a sort of batch insert, ie

INSERT INTO TEST (KEY,DATA) VAlUES
('Key1','Data1'),
('Key2','Data2');

I don't know if this is possible or even desirable, but it may be a
nice method of batch loading data.

An additional problem which I have just thought of is transaction
control.

Regards
Ian Newby