> Now, I have two problems with this:
> 1. IMHO "as" should NOT be optional. Am I wrong on this?

That's how it was always in Firebird. If you believe that SQL standard says
that "AS" is not optinal, please report this as bug (though I doubt that it
will be corrected since it works with "AS" as well ).

> 2. ResultSet.getString("a") gave me "null" instead of "no such
> column". Why?

Search is first done using the alias names, and if nothing if found, then
real column names are used for the next search, the first match is returned
if something is found.

> BTW: Can someone give me an url of a sql syntax specification?
> Preferably SQL92 or SQL99, not only firebirds docs, which I already
> have.

SQL standards are not free, you have to pay for
them(http://www.iso.org/iso/en/CombinedQueryResult.CombinedQueryResult?query
String=SQL). But use FTP search engines, you will definitely find some
"available" for download.

Roman