Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>
> The Hermit Hacker writes:
>
> > Is anyone looking at doing this? Is this purely a MySQL-ism, or is it
> > something that everyone else has except us?
> It's not required by SQL, that's for sure. I think in 7.2 we'll tackle
> schema support, which will accomplish the same thing. Many people
> (including myself) are of the opinion that not allowing cross-db access is
> in fact a feature.
I am of the inverse opinion : cross-DB joining is the only reasonable
way to cope with the unfortunate, disgracious, unreasonable, but quite
inescapable real-life fact that all data do not live in the same server
in any but the smallest sites ...
I recently did a plea in this list ("A post-7.1 wishlist") in this
direction, and got an answer (Peter Einstraut ?) that was more or less
on the lines of "over our dead bodies !" ... Sigh ...
However, I *think* that it could be done by another tool, such as
Easysoft's (Nick Gorham's, I think) SQL Engine, which allows for joins
between any ODBC-reachable tools. This tool is unreasonably expensive
for private use ($800 + $200/year mandatory maintainance). A PostgreSQL
alternative would be, IMSAO, a huge benefit, even huger if able to
cross-join with ODBC data sources ...
M$ Access has this, since version 1, and that's a hell of a handy
feature for a lot of cases involving management of multiple data sources
...
> > > why not just build PgSQL, and have transaction support *with* subselects
> > > and everything else that mySQL doesn't have?
> >
> > I'd *love* to use PgSQL, but it doesn't support cross-DB joins (or at
> > least I couldn't figure out how to do it.) MySQL handles this, so
> > I'm using MySQL and would also like to have transaction support...
I have to tell that my daily work involves this kind of problems, with
data sources ranging from SAS datasets under MVS/XA to Excel files to
Oracle databases to younameit ... That's the kind of problem I would
*love* to have PostgreSQL to cope with, and *not* M$ Access ...
[ Back to lurking mode ... ]
E. Charpentier
--
Emmanuel Charpentier
