Re: SQL Standards

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:12:41 -0800, DA Morgan wrote:

> If creators of databases do follow the standard ... then they have
> commiditized their offerings and the result will be (A) purchases based on
> price alone, and (B) Microsoft wins.

There is plenty of room for implementation differences (and extra features outside the standardized fields), management differences, platform support, scalability/stability, etc. And, by the way: MSSQL's pricing seems to be going one way: up.

About the possible dissolvement of SC32 WG3: Personally, I can think of few more areas where the standard should be expanded. So dissolvement might be such a big problem. Further work should be probably be put into putting the standard on a diet (remove irrelevant parts, such as SQLJ, for example); while I would appreciate such a cleaning process, I imagine that the work might be rather boring.

What I'm most worried about is the signal value of dissolving the working group. A positive signal like "SQL is complete" will probably not be the outcome. More likely is that would be seen as "SQL is dead" which would be a problem: It could motivate a company like Oracle to turn its stagnating SQL standard support into declining support (justifying it with the "dead SQL standard").

-- 
Greetings from Troels Arvin, Copenhagen, Denmark