Yo Jim!
I'm curious as to what your thoughts are in regards to the fact that the
standard isn't itself open? Correct me if I'm wrong, but every-time
something is added, removed, or changed in Drizzle in terms of
syntax, some
guy that happens to have a copy of said standard has to validate it?
To me,
in an open source world, that doesn't make any sense.
I know there's stuff in the official SQL standard that doesn't make any
practical sense. Implementing those would be, well, impractical :)
Drizzle's
core is probably not going to need to worry about many of these
anyway since
they are, if I remember correctly, in relation to views, procedures,
objects
(I think?), etc. Alot of that seems like it would be a pluggable
module into
Drizzle anyway.
So, while bucking the standard isn't a good idea in the grand scheme of
things, I think there could be times where it could make sense to do
so. The
difference is that I think Drizzle's SQL standard should be openly
published
and freely available for others to implement. In fact, I'd say all
the open
source DB's and the DB platforms that care should work on an Open SQL
standard and adhere to that.
Until we have an Open SQL standard, while inherently I agree with
you, I'm
not so sure Drizzle needs to worry so much about the closed SQL
standard.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Drizzle is mostly compliant, or at least
will
be depending on what people decide about those terrible back-ticks. Any
place were Drizzle deviates can't be by much since Drizzle doesn't
support a
huge number of things from the standard in the core. So if Drizzle is
just a
little off, I would think a simple migration script would allow
migrating to
and from multiple DBs. That's not ideal, but then again, neither is
having
to pay money for a silly standard.
$0.02
Tim
P.S. If I'm totally wrong about any of that, feel free to openly
flame away
:)
On May 3, 2009, at 2:40 PM, Jim Starkey wrote:
At the risk of boring everyone to death, I'd like to explain a bit more
about why I continue to push a standard I don't like.
In the computer world, like many others, there comes a time where a
technology is good enough. At that point, something better has a
very high
bar to acceptance. Yes, this leads to less than optimal standards,
but a
good enough standard allows folks to concentrate on newer and more
interesting stuff. Lotus 1-2-3 was good, but not good enough.
Excel, on
the other hand, is widely regarded as good enough, sufficiently good
that
competing against it is pointless. X-11 is another example. X-10
wasn't
good enough, X-11 is. Sun's News and display postscript were both
better
than X-11, but not sufficiently better to bother with.
When the marketplace speaks, one should either listen or prepare for a
life a deep frustration.
SQL is clearly good enough. It had all sorts of competitors, all of
which
are nearly forgotten. SQL won more or less fair and square -- there
were
multiple implementations of SQL, mostly incompatible, a couple of
implementations of QUEL, a couple of implementations of the
DEC/Interbase
language, and any number of forgotten one-offs.
Due to pressure from users, the various SQL implementations have
gradually
coalesced around an official standard. The process was ugly and
rigged, but
the world spoke very clearly that it wanted a standard database
language,
and those products that wished to ignore the standard would be
punished.
MySQL has an idea that it sets it own standard. This is not only
horseshit, but blatantly anti-democratic horseshit. It is the same
horseshit that Oracle and Ingres tried to pull with non-standard SQL
and
QUEL -- languages that they controlled and the rest of the world be
damned.
The MySQL attitude toward SQL is stupid, ignorant, short sighted,
arrogant, and just plain wrong. Interoperability with the rest of
the world
is important because it lets people use database software to solve
one set
of problems so they can concentrate on other sets of problems.
Throwing
roadblocks in front of users that both impede acceptance of drizzle
or MySQL
and, not incidentally, prevent users from converting to other
systems, is
profoundly unfortunate.
So, drizzle, join the world or thumb your nose at it and go your own
way.
But please don't proclaim out of one side of your mouth that you
are a SQL
database system and out the other that you aren't willing to go
beyond lip
service to the standard.
When you have semantics beyond the standard, by all means go your
own way.
Innovation should not be stifled by a standard. But if the only
motivation
for divergence from the standard is to show the world that you're
smarter
than everyone else (or, in the case of MySQL, too dumb to fix it),
give it
up and get a life.
Let the counter-rants begin.
--
Jim Starkey
President, NimbusDB, Inc.
978 526-1376
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