Re: SQL compliance, was Re: [HACKERS] follow-up on PC Week Labsbenchmark results

>> You had inquired earlier about "when we would support complete SQL92"
>> (give or take a few words). What areas of entry level SQL92 are we
>> missing in your opinion (or should we wait for the article)?
> Well, what I look for on the language side is complete SQL-92 entry level
> compliance, plus common language extensions like outer joins, cast, case,
> cube, rollup, a datetime data type, add table constraint and alter table.
> Also, I look for a stored procedure language. Basically, parity with the
> commercial databases. :)

I've since seen the article in the latest issue of PCWeek. The article
was not at all clear on the *specific* features which would disqualify
Postgres from having SQL92 entry level compliance (for most commercial
RDBMSes this is the only level they attain), and I was amused to note
that although InterBase was lauded for SQL92 compliance, the author
did encourage them to consider supporting the SQL92 comment delimiter
("--") in their next release :))

Since InterBase has not been released as Open Source, and since we
will have a 7.0 release *before* Inprise does try the Open Source
thing, it would be nice to have those things happen before annointing
it as the "one true Open Source RDBMS" (tm). But frankly PCWeek has
been far more aggressively clueless in the past, and all in all they
are coming much closer to a balanced view of the world over the last
few months.

It's nice seeing Postgres mentioned at all (though in this article
none of the titles or subtitles mentioned us; you had to look at the
content), and we've still got a long way to go to completely overcome
the FUD-based criticisms of Open Source which were more clearly
apparent in PCWeek until very recently.

- Thomas

--
Thomas Lockhart lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu
South Pasadena, California