RE: Order By

I've just recently joined the discussion group, and have been following this
recent exchange on Order by.  I agree with the idea of option 3.  Leave it up to
the implementation on the back end.  You certainly don't want to force a DAV
server using backend database or data storage provider into a certain technique
this would only mean DAV server response delays to reprocess data into a
compatable DAV ordering policy.

I don't know if you were considering already, but if you did go with option 3,
it would be great to have a DAV live property describing the ordering policy of
the database returning the results of the query.

Eric Stephan



	-----Original Message-----
	From:	Tapas Nayak [SMTP:tapasnay@Exchange.Microsoft.com]
	Sent:	Friday, June 09, 2000 12:56 AM
	To:	Babich, Alan; Kevin Wiggen; www-webdav-dasl@w3.org
	Subject:	RE: Order By

	It may be restrictive to prescribe one way or the other by 
	interpreting nulls with one interpretation. NULLs have 
	different interpretations in different semantic contexts. 
	While for strings a NULL may be considered as a NULL string, in 
	many cases NULL represent values not known or dont care. For an integer 
	field, say age, it may be incorrect to consider NULL as 0, for example. 
	It is this lack of a unique concrete interpretation of NULL in all
situations 
	that left its interpretation to the implementation in SQL spec, I think.

	And probably that is the appropriate thing to do here too. Thus option 3
seems to be 
	the appropriate thing. I understand, however, that they will pose a
problem in collation 
	of results from more than one data sources, if the participating data
sources chose 
	different implementations for the same property. That would indicate
possibly that 
	even though it is the same property, different providers have taken
slightly different 
	semantics for it. In that case either collator will have to do some
reconciliation 
	of these different interpretations or enforce one semantics over the
other. 

	Regards 
	Tapas 
	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Babich, Alan [ <mailto:ABabich@filenet.com>] 
	Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 6:43 PM 
	To: 'Kevin Wiggen'; www-webdav-dasl@w3.org 
	Subject: RE: Order By 


	Does anybody else out there have an opinion? 

	The choices are: 

	(1) Nulls sort first 
	(2) Nulls sort last 
	(3) Nulls sort first or last at the implementation's choice 

	These three choices are compatible with the SQL spec., and 
	make logical sense. Only choice (1) is compatible with DMA. 

	Consider how zero length strings sort: 
	"A" sorts before "AA", because it is a shorter string. 
	(This is not only specified in the SQL spec., 
	it is the way things are listed in the phone book.) 
	Therefore, the zero length string, "", sorts before "A" 
	and before all other strings with length greater than zero. 

	A null string is similar to a zero length string since 
	neither contains any characters, so it seems odd to me 
	to put null strings and zero length strings at opposite ends 
	of the sort. I would think doing that could confuse some end users 
	who are not sophisticated in the subtleties of zero length 
	strings versus null strings. It also forces the implementation 
	to split the semantic hair of whether zero length strings are 
	null or not. I would prefer not to risk confusing users or 
	implementers. In other words I prefer choice (1), and I 
	claim that choices (2) and (3) have some risk of confusing 
	some end users and implementers because of the similarity of 
	null strings and zero length strings. 

	(BTW, I agree with you, Kevin, that postgresql seems to be 
	violating the SQL spec. Nulls must always sort first or last, 
	so DESC must put nulls at the opposite end. In postgresql, 
	as you have shown, DESC doesn't do that.) 

	Alan 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Kevin Wiggen [ <mailto:wiggs@xythos.com>] 
	Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 4:42 PM 
	To: Kevin Wiggen; Babich, Alan; Jim Davis; www-webdav-dasl@w3.org 
	Subject: RE: Order By 



	OK I will clarify (not that anyone cares) 

	Oracle 

	order by column1 => nulls sort last 
	order by column1 DESC => nulls sort first 

	Postgresql 

	order by column1 => nulls sort last 
	order by column1 DESC => nulls sort last 

	I could argue that either one makes sense to me (although postgresql
seems 
	to be violating the spec).... 

	Kevin 


	-----Original Message----- 
	From: www-webdav-dasl-request@w3.org 
	[ <mailto:www-webdav-dasl-request@w3.org>]On Behalf Of Kevin Wiggen 
	Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2000 4:03 PM 
	To: Babich, Alan; Jim Davis; www-webdav-dasl@w3.org 
	Subject: RE: Order By 




	Well Oracle and Postgresql (the only db's I have around, I called a
friend 
	to get Informix but he's not around), both sort the nulls last.  This
makes 
	sense to me, as if it doesn't exist, then you probably don't care about
it, 
	thus it sorts last. 

	So I guess I object to the spec.  I would like to see it changed so that

	nulls sort last. 

	Kevin 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Babich, Alan [ <mailto:ABabich@filenet.com>] 
	Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 8:50 PM 
	To: 'Kevin Wiggen'; Jim Davis; www-webdav-dasl@w3.org 
	Subject: RE: Order By 


	I just looked it up. I thought the SQL spec. required nulls to sort
first. 
	Here's what the version of the SQL spec. that I have actually says: 

	ANSI X3.135-1992 (Database Language SQL) in section 13.1, General Rule
3)b), 
	page 309, says "Whether a sort key value that is null is considered
greater 
	or 
	less than a non-null value is implementation-defined, but all sort key 
	values that 
	are null shall either be considered greater than all non-null values or
be 
	considered 
	less than all non-null values." 

	Last time I used Oracle (which was a while ago) it sorted nulls first. 
	To me, logically, null is even less significant than zero, so it seems
right 
	to me 
	that nulls should come first. I seem to remember that DMA query requires

	nulls to sort first. 

	I personally think it's better for everybody to do things the same way 
	(that's why we have specs., 
	isn't it?). 

	We made it definite in DASL, and made nulls sort first. 
	Any significant objections, or are there just comments but not a true 
	objection? 


	Alan Babich 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Kevin Wiggen [ <mailto:wiggs@xythos.com>] 
	Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 3:26 PM 
	To: Jim Davis; www-webdav-dasl@w3.org 
	Subject: RE: Order By 



	After further review :) 

	The fact that nulls sort first????, if the value is null it is probably 
	because the property isn't defined and therefore you could care less,
but 
	these are the ones sorted first???  The spec acts as though this is
common 
	in ANSI standard SQL, but I have only seen the opposite from every DB I
have 
	ever worked with (which maybe means none of them follow the standard) 

	Kevin 


	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Jim Davis [ <mailto:jrd3@alum.mit.edu>] 
	Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2000 7:47 AM 
	To: Kevin Wiggen; www-webdav-dasl@w3.org 
	Subject: Re: Order By 


	At 10:16 PM 6/6/00 -0700, Kevin Wiggen wrote: 
	> 
	> 
	>Does adding "Order By Content Length" (or any other file specific
property) 
	>automatically add "AND Resource Type = File" to the Where clause of a
Dasl 
	>Query? 
	> 
	>Or in English, does adding a file specific property to the orderby
clause 
	in 
	>a dasl query implicitly make all resources that are returned files?  or
do 
	>the directories and null resources simply sort last? 

	The latter.   Nowhere does  the spec say that anything is added 
	(implicitly) to the where clause, and I would never agree to that.  But
it 
	does say  "In the context of the DAV:orderby element, null values are 
	considered to collate before any actual (i.e., non null) value,
including 
	strings of zero length".  (5.6 in the most recent draft) 

	Is this a problem either technically or editorially? 

	regards 

	Jim

Received on Friday, 9 June 2000 12:17:51 UTC