At 10:21 AM 6/16/2003 +0000, peter_jacobi.rm wrote:

>I kindly ask someone who can speak for the
>direction of Firebird development, to comment on
>the issue of Standard Conformance in current (1.5)
>and future versions of Firebird:

As you know, Firebird is a co-operative project so
no one person can really speak for its direction.
Features are added as people need them. Some features
don't have standard implementations. Where there are
standard syntax and semantics, we prefer to use them.

However, there are areas in which Firebird is non-standard.
SQL-99 defines trigger syntax and semantics which we
consider very inferior to the currently implemented
syntax and semantics.

>A. Perhaps the tables in
>http://www.dbazine.com/gulutzan3.html
>can be used as a start and "Firebird/now"
>and "Firebird/planned" columns be made?
>(BTW, an IB7 column would be nice too)

Can't help with IB7, but will take a hack at FB.

>B. Also a Firebird developer's consensus (or
>non-consensus) on the importance of the SQL
>standard would be welcome.

The SQL standard has a much less happy history than
the C++ standard. The development of the standard
has been dominated by large vendors who appear to care
more about protecting their implementation than developing
a coherent standard.

And the simple fact of the matter is that programs are
not transportable unless they use an intermediate layer -
JDBC or some other. Every intermediate layer has a
database specific module that calls the database following
the rules for that specific database.

>In SQL nearly all vendors prefer their own legacy dialect
>against moving to closer to the standard. Is the standard so
>bad or is there simply no business case in conforming?

Or both?

Regards,

Ann
www.ibphoenix.com
We have answers.