Re: Connect By for 8.0

Hans-Jrgen Schnig wrote:
> Neil Conway wrote:
> > Robert Treat wrote:
> >
> >> Actually i believe people want both syntax's as the former is used by
> >> oracle and the latter by db2 (iirc)
> >
> >
> > I think the past consensus has been to adopt the SQL standard syntax. Is
> > there any reason to also support the Oracle syntax other than for
> > compatibility? (And if that is it, I think it's a pretty flimsy reason.)
> >
> > -Neil
> >
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>
> Neil,
>
> Compatibility is the ONLY reason and it is related to money (the only
> language people understand).
> We have done a lot of migration here and I can tell you that support for
> Oracle style CONNECT BY would make more people happy than the SQL style
> syntax.
> The reason for that is very simple: Code can be migrated without any
> changes (= without introducing potential bugs).
> I know that SQL standards are tremendously important but if there is an
> easy way to support Oracle syntax as well this is definitely the
> preferred way to go.
> I think it is important not to think in dogmas (in this case this means
> SQL syntax is always better) - there should be a reasonable compromise
> between compatibility and standard.
> My compromise would be: Support both syntaxes if possible.

I can see your point, but imagine if we had Oracle compatibility for
lots of cases --- our system would have either non-standard or duplicate
ways of doing things, and that would be quite confusing.

--
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