Re: Downloadable draft of SQL:2008

Hi Richard,

very nice job in finding this document!

On Tue, 2010-10-19 at 23:48 +0100, Richard Cyganiak wrote:
> http://www.wiscorp.com/sql200n.zip
> 
> This looks like a 2006 draft of SQL:2008. I don't know how it differs  
> from the final version, and I don't know why it is available for  
> download for free, given the price of the real standard.
> 
> Anyone who doesn't have a copy of SQL:2008 handy might find this useful.
> 
> Part 1 defines basic terminology (client, server, schema, table,  
> column etc) and says what it in SQL Core.
> 
> Part 2 defines the SQL language.
> 
> Part 11 defines the Information Schema (the standard way of finding  
> out which tables and columns are available in a database).
> 
> The other parts are not relevant for SQL Core.

I would like to emphasize the Part 14, which defines a complete mapping
from SQL to XML. It's really interesting to see how they go through the
SQL abstract model. In my opinion, the most important paragraph is "4.10
Overview of mappings" which should also exists in RDB2RDF. It also
refines which part of SQL they consider in the mapping. For example,
they don't considerer the SQL constraints, maybe just because XML being
a tree model, it does not make sense to map that in the mapped data.

Their style is to use plain-English as a language for specifying the
algorithm. But don't be surprised, they really define/call functions,
affect variables, do if-then-else and switch-cases, etc. Just as in any
computer language (well, maybe functional language as they don't use
side-effects anywhere).

Alexandre.

> 
> Best,
> Richard
> 
>

Received on Wednesday, 20 October 2010 13:29:30 UTC