At 12:05 PM 6/9/01 -0700, Jason Wharton wrote:

>
>Mostly I want the ability to do a DROP and be able to tell it to ignore
>raising an exception if the object has already been dropped or never created
>in the first place. I don't care what the syntax is. I leave that to the
>rest of you.
>
>Jim's comments were to scattered for me to get a clear picture what he was
>talking about and how it related to my remarks. In one sense he seemed to
>agree that a more flexible dialect be used but he seemed to avoid agreeing
>with me as much as possible.
>

I was wondering why you wanted a non-complaining DROP. I mused
whether in was in preparation for an unconditional CREATE of a
table of the same name, and wondered whether an UPGRADE TABLE
was a satisfactory alternative (UPDATE TABLE would create the
table if it didn't exist and transmogrify it in a generally
upwards compatible way if it did).

The more general point is that in order to evaluate an extension,
it is important to understand what problem it purports to solve,
and that a statement of the problem sometimes leads to a different
but satisfactory solution.

And, of course, to avoid agreeing with you if at all possible
(Jason, that's a joke).

Jim Starkey