From: Stefan Schmiedl Date: 2004-11-25T16:48:01+09:00 Subject: Re: rails is awesome On Thu, 25 Nov 2004 09:34:33 +0900, Glenn Parker wrote: > Stefan Schmiedl wrote: >> >> I wish people would stop exaggerating. Choosing the right job >> for the tool at hand results in a lot more working programs. >> Is Ruby broken because it's not Perl-compatible? Is Objective-C >> broken because it can't cope with C++ code? > > Of course, the right tool for the right job, but what if I handed you a > screwdriver carved out of celery? I'd try to preserve it as a sample of craftmanship. If you expected me to really work with it, I'd try to preserve you as a sample of a completely different kind ;-> > MySQL incorporates "SQL" in its name, > but it does not begin to implement the SQL that the vast majority of SQL > developers have accepted. I wouldn't use MySQL as the standard of > comparison for the rest of the SQL world any more than I would try to > build a house using a child's scribbles. > > In case it's not clear, I agree very strongly with Austin in this > debate. SQL is a mature and well-documented language that deserves some > respect. There is a great deal of power that can be leveraged by > embracing the SQL standard, and ignoring that standard is a wasted > opportunity. Borland Database Engine (BDE) SQL, ODBC SQL, MS Jet SQL, MS SQLServer T-SQL: All claim to accept (some variant of) SQL where you can easily stumble over more or less subtle differences. If you're lucky, they are caught as errors by the receiving server, if not, you get some very interesting bugs to hunt for. All I expect of something called SQL is that the basic keywords and syntax are there. Everything else I look up when I work with it. To veer off on a tangent, what I'd really like to see is a database engine offering somewhat more oriented towards the original ideas of relational algebra than SQL does. The implementation used in Suneido (www.suneido.com, probably still windows only) is very interesting, IMO. Enough. On to other things. s.