Re: Is Oracle SQL99 Compliant?

From: DA Morgan <damorgan_at_x.washington.edu>
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 20:48:42 -0800
Message-ID: <41e8a0a6_2@127.0.0.1>

Serge Rielau wrote:

> LOL Shame on DB2 that IMS and U2 are not SQL compliant ;-)
> You will need to dig fairly deep to find DML statements which are
> incompatible amongst the DB2 products.

But not very far if you do DDL. Just as far as the length of the name of a table or column.

> But you are right: Oracle is 100% compatible with Oracle and
> integrates 100% with Oracle. Stay in Ora-land and you shall be safe.

Which lets be fair beats heck out of trying to stay with DB2 moving between different platforms and operating systems. Until you are compatible with yourself you should hardly be expecting anyone else to try to be compatible with you.

> In the meantime the world moves on and finds itself the next attempt to
> standardize. XQuery.. another child which seems to die at birth.

We could hope.

>>> While Oracle does implement many SQL-99 features it has
>>> a) numerous extensions that are unlikely to ever make it into the 
>>> standard because they don't adhere to the foundation of SQL

>
>

>> but make it run really fast.  If we were truly all the "same" what 
>> would be the
>> point?

>
> Not the same. But implement features so they are standardizable and not
> doomed to be proprietary.

Why? As the customer why would I want that? Doesn't that, by definition, stifle any growth of new featuers? You want compatiblity to help IBM knock off Oracle installations and ease a migration path to your door: Perfectly understandable. But from where I sit as one who buys the products of both companies your interests are not my interests.

I want a vigorously competitive market in which you are forced to compete and by doing so push Oracle even harder to give me more truly wonderful features and capabilities such as the instrumentation that has been added to 10g. I don't for one minute think that would have come into existance without competitive pressure.

>> and why does "going way above and beyond" mean "bad thing"?

>
> See above, pushing is good, making a mess is not.

Define making a mess as viewed from the standpoint of IT managment. Differences in syntax? I could give a rip. If the DBAs and developers that work for me want a job they should be thankful. If all were the same I wouldn't need 1/3 of them.

>> oh but wait, lets try to port our DB2 mainframe app to db2 "udb" -- 
>> without
>> change, all of the time.  portability within the same "product" should 
>> be "easy"
>> no?

>
> A lot easier than between Oracle and DB2, yes.

Irrelevant. If you can't even port between different versions of your own product-line why should Oracle do more than just have a good laugh. And why should anyone pay any attention to the whining. There is good reason as an IBM customer to want interoperability with DB2. But to claim that another company should modify their product more than you are willing to modify your own is the purest form of hypocrisy.

>> how many NIST certs did db2 get before NIST stopped doing it?

>
> I know it was certified.. for anything else .. I claim late birth :-)

Good dodge.

> Cheers
> Serge

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)

Received on Fri Jan 14 2005 - 22:48:42 CST