>Hi,
>
>I have been a major contributor to Firebird since 2003, also my previous company "BASX", which I was the Head developer of,
>was a gold sponsor of Firebird.
>
>I have recently moved to another company that uses SQLAnywhere.
>
>They are interested in moving to Firebird.
>
>But Firebird does not have some of the key features of SQL Anywhere, they depend on a lot.
>
>like "XMLForest", "XMLElement", etc, full XML compatibility is available in both SQLAnywhere and Oracle.
>
>like local temporary tables/ Hash Tables.
>
>like enabled select column aliases to be reused in same SQL.
>
>eg.
>
>SELECT (x/y) AS MYDIV
>,MYDIV * Z AS MYDIVMULTIPLIED
>FROM RDB$DATABASE.
>
>Is it possible. If I put an option on the table, that the company I work for sponsors Firebird. and then Firebird could add this type of stuff?

Your particular example I would typically write (using Fb 2.5, but I think it has been available since 2.0 or 2.1):

With tmp(MYDIV) as
(SELECT (x/y) from RDB$DATABASE)
SELECT MYDIV, MYDIV * Z AS MYDIVMULTIPLIED
FROM tmp

The answer to your more important question about sponsorship, I would guess depends on the individual feature and how it fits with the general ideas of the Firebird future. Certainly sponsors can influence priorities in development. The developers sometimes lurk on this list, but I think firebird-devel could be a more proper place to discuss sponsorship since there are more of them there and it could be easier to see how the desires of your company fits the development.

Set