Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!odi!dlw
From: dlw@odi.com (Dan Weinreb)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Parsing Query Languages in the Client or Server
Message-ID: <1989Sep24.215650.15732@odi.com>
Date: 24 Sep 89 21:56:50 GMT
References: <6155@sybase.sybase.com> <6167@sybase.sybase.com>
Reply-To: dlw@odi.com
Organization: Object Design, Inc.
Lines: 30
In-Reply-To: jeffl@sybase.Sybase.COM's message of 21 Sep 89 05:36:55 GMT

In article <6167@sybase.sybase.com> jeffl@sybase.Sybase.COM (Jeff Lichtman) writes:

   > At Britton Lee
   > query languages were parsed in the clients and parse trees were sent
   > to the server. Here at Sybase we send the query language to the
   > server to be parsed.

   I believe the latter approach is better.  The world is moving toward
   open, standardized interfaces.  There is already an ANSI SQL standard,
   and a subcommittee of ANSI X3H2 is working on remote database access
   protocols.  Eventually, a client will be able to run queries on anyone's
   server without having to know much about the server. 

There's one aspect of this standardization that I've never understood.
The ANSI SQL definition provides a standard for queries to relational
databases.  However, there doesn't seem to be anything that provides a
standard describing the format of the data returned by the server to
the client.  For example, what delimits one value from the next, or
one tuple from the next?  Are floating point numbers sent in an ASCII
representation, or binary using IEEE format, or what?

Is there currently any standardization between/among more than one
vendor in this area?

Is this something being addressed by the aforementioned subcommittee
of X3H2?  If so, how's the subcommittee's work progressing?

Thank you.

Dan Weinreb		Object Design, Inc.		dlw@odi.com