> 1. Message oriented. All data is transmitted as a self described
> byte stream.

Can you elaborate? Do you mean something like SOAP? Then I am against it.

> 2. Functional: Each entrypoint returns a single value/object.
> 3. Exception based: Exceptions are thrown, not returned as vectors or
> status codes.
> 4. Object oriented: interface objects (SQL strings, data messasges)
> are passed as objects

I think we have to keep the wire protocol in mind. The API should be
designed to minimize number of messages needed to be send over the
wire, so people can code the application with almost no overhead on
the calls.

Each call should take some kind of payload that describes the expected
output. For example, if people need to get the number of inserted
records, something analogous to isc_dsql_execute2 takes something
analogous to info flags and the response in addition to the statement
output also returns info information.

Roman