Re: LinuxTag wrapup

Tom Lane wrote:

>Andreas Pflug <pgadmin@pse-consulting.de> writes:
>  
>
>>>How about an external tool that helps in translating apps to
>>>SQL-standard syntax?  Oracle does accept the standard syntax after all.
>>>      
>>>
>
>  
>
>>Nice idea, but
>>- sources might not be accessible
>>- sources might not be easily readable (esp. if not embedded sql, 
>>example pgadmin) or created dynamically.
>>- probably too many non-ansi compliant servers (i.e. pre-9) still in use.
>>    
>>
>
>Well, I am certainly *not* buying into a goal of "support any
>application that has worked with any version of Oracle with zero source
>code changes". 
>
I didn't suggest that.

> As Dennis already pointed out, the syntax is just the
>tip of the iceberg.  (Look for instance at the thread on pgsql-bugs
>yesterday, where we concluded that Oracle 8 thinks the way to interpret
>"WHERE charcolumn = intconstant" is to cast the column to integer.
>Talk about bizarre choices...)
>  
>
Yup. No chance to mimic Oracle8 completely. For a heartily laughter: one 
guy hoped to get a PostgeSQL that's completely compatible even on the 
line protocol level. He had listened to Michael's talk, and understood 
that pgsql supports Informix like that...

>If we bought into such a goal, even partially, we'd stop making forward
>progress on our own issues and spend all our time hashing over Oracle
>compatibility choices.
>  
>
I'd offer just some basic stuff, i.e. (+) joins and sequences (BTW, we 
had discussions about sequence calling syntax quite a while ago; AFAIR 
there was consensus that a different syntax is desirable, oracle style 
being one alternative, with no decision).
This certainly wouldn't cover everything, but users could concentrate on 
the remaining 10 % making 90 % of the migration work.

Regards,
Andreas