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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