I've been searching for half an hour and can't find any resources stating what level of the SQL ANSI standard is supported on various database engines.
It looks like some level of support is provided by most engines, but I'd like to know exactly what level is officially supported.
I'm primarily interested in MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.
EDIT: PostgreSQL has a great page on compliance, exactly what I was looking for regarding the other engines: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/features.html
these might help a little:
Comparison of different SQL implementations
wikipedia - Comparison of relational database management systems
wikipedia - SQL - Standardization
The question of "which level of the standard" is too simple.
There are portions of the standard that are implemented by no engine at all, e.g. CREATE ASSERTION.
For that reason, it might be better to speak of "percentage of standard features supported" for each individual engine. But the vendors will be very reluctant to publish such measurements themselves.
The PostgreSQL manual has for all SQL statements a compatibility section.
According to the HSQLDB manual, it is the most standards compliant RDBMS.
Almost all syntactic features of SQL-92 up to Advanced Level are supported
SQL:2008 core and many optional features of this standard
Firebird 3 sql standard conformance page
Related
we are just starting to use Google Analytics data in BigQuery and previously used just the MSSQL Server in the work environment. We would like to move some of the analysis to the GCP and BigQuery, but could not decide on what is the better option to use - standard or legacy SQL?
In both cases we would have to adjust to the new language version, but the real question is what is the best choice when it comes to Google Analytics data analysis? Is there something that from the technical point of view should make us choose legacy over standard, or the other way around?
It is very misleading for us that there are two versions, because legacy seems to be more developed now, but perphaps standard will be the main version for SQL in the future in BQ?
BigQuery Standard SQL is the way to go. It has much more features than Legacy SQL.
Note: it is not binary choice. You always can use Legacy SQL - if there is something that you will find easier to express with it. From my experience it is mostly opposite - with very few exceptions. Most prominent (for me for example being) - Table Decorators - Support for table decorators in standard SQL is planned but not yet implemented.
I would recommend looking into Migrating from legacy SQL - not from migration point of view as you are the new to BigQuery - but because it is a good place to see and compare features of both dialects in one place.
Also I recommend to check BigQuery Issue Tracker so you can get some extra insight
Standard SQL is the preferred SQL dialect for use in BigQuery, as stated in the migration guide. While legacy SQL has been around for quite some time--and is still the default at the time of this writing--there is no active development work on it. If you are evaluating which to use, you should pick standard SQL, since in addition to being more similar to T-SQL (SQL Server's dialect) it is more expressive, has fewer surprising edge cases, and generally has more features.
Go with Standard SQL, as that's on the longterm roadmap.
From experience some queries are faster under Legacy SQL, but this is changing as Standard SQL is the one that is actively developed.
Everybody loves to mention how JDBC abstracts away vendor-specific differences between SQLs to present a single SQL flavor that would work against a whole slew of them.
But no book or reference on JDBC ever mentions a (detailed) specification or even a decent, user-space coverage of this SQL supported by (a specific version of) JDBC, say JDBC 4.1!
So, what ends up happening (at least with me) is that, if I'm working with MySQL, I must refer to the MySQL reference manual and then try to guard myself against accidentally using MySQL-specific features. For writing portable SQL (at least at the level supported by the JDBC driver version I'm using), I would rather prefer to refer to a JDBC spec or to an SQL spec directly instead of referring to MySQL, PostgresQL, etc.
Is the SQL standard itself (2008, 2003, etc), on which a particular version of JDBC is based, freely available? Or, do I have to shell out $$ to get a copy?
There is no "JDBC SQL", just ISO SQL and the vendor implementations of it. JDBC defines the interface for talking to SQL databases, it's a different layer to the query language its self.
The reference for JDBC its self is the JSR documentation:
JDBC 4.0
JDBC 4.1
Unfortunately the official SQL standards are expensive and must be purchased from the ISO.
You can find late-stage drafts that're perfectly good for reference when you're not trying to develop a conforming implementation here among other places.
The SQL spec isn't the most friendly and readable of things, so in practice it's a good idea to use vendor documentation that's actually intended to be read by human beings. You can compare a couple of vendor docs or fall back on the standard doc when uncertainty arises.
Standard compliance with the spec isn't exactly ideal across DBs; writing code strictly to the spec doesn't necessarily mean it'll actually work. For example, MySQL doesn't impliment window functions or common table expressions, PostgreSQL doesn't implement SQL/PSM (instead offering PL/PgSQL) or the CALL statement; most vendors use different ways of specifying auto-increment columns or sequence generators; etc etc etc.
Please don't use the w3schools SQL guides, they're severely outdated, wrong, fail to differentiate between vendor extensions and the standard, and should generally be avoided. I mention them because w3schools tends to come up quite high in search rankings - back in the day they used to actually be useful.
You can download the JDBC 4.1 specification from http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/jcp/jdbc-4_1-mrel-spec/index.html but this only covers JDBC itself, not SQL. The specification is more a description of the interface; it does expect databases to support some level of the SQL standards, but don't expect to find more information than a reference to the SQL standard if it comes to the requirements to queries.
You usually need to use the database specific SQL anyway, because even though there is a SQL standard, database vendors don't implement them to the letter. JDBC itself defines some escapes to bridge the gaps, but as far as I know, they are hardly ever used. Drivers also - usually - don't translate standard SQL to database specific SQL if the database doesn't support the standard SQL.
If you want to look at the official SQL standard, you need to buy it from ISO or your country-specific ISO representative. That said, with some searching you can find and download draft versions of the specification for free. I am not sure how helpful that is though, as the SQL standard documents are not intended as a reference manual, but meant to be a formal description and goes really deep in details that are only relevant to an implementer.
word on the street is that Perl is defined not by a spec but by whatever the current interpreter version happens to accept. Now, let's consider an SQL dialect like TSQL. Is there a published spec of it that would allow making a validator equivalent to the one inside SQL Server? Are there such validators already in existence as open source? And the same question for Oracle.
Ok, so for MySQL I am guessing that validator could be extracted directly from the MySQL codebase. Nevertheless, do they in fact publish the spec itself in case I wanted to make my own validator?
You seem to have an idea of what to do for MySQL. I can't really say much about Oracle apart from that it mostly implements ANSI SQL and the PL/SQL procedural language extensions to SQL can mostly be found here for Oracle 9i.
For SQL Server:
Microsoft Books On Line (BOL) is the official reference spec. There are different pages for different versions of SQL Server, however.
There are a few projects relating to this.
http://www.sqlparser.com/ - This has .NET, Java, COM and VCL versions for Oracle, DB2, Mysql and SQL Server / Sybase (T-SQL). Quite reasonably priced too.
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/1136/SharpHSQL-An-SQL-engine-written-in-C (c#)
http://antlr.org/ - This looks like a good bet.
I often use this site for formatting of SQL but it also does some validation although it's fairly crude:
http://www.dpriver.com/pp/sqlformat.htm
This is a similar site:
http://www.tsqltidy.com/
I would suggest that writing a validator for SQL even in just one of its variations is a massive undertaking. You could look at the various ISO/IEC standards for ANSI SQL. ANSI SQL-92 is very widely implemented, but there is a SQL:2008 standard as well.
You'd have to pay for the documentation for those standards though and they aren't cheap.
Good luck.
Can anyone recommend a good ANSI SQL reference manual?
I don't necessary mean a tutorial but a proper reference document to lookup when you need either a basic or more in-depth explanation or example.
Currently I am using W3Schools SQL Tutorial and SQL Tutorial which are ok, but I don't find them "deep" enough.
Of course, each major RDBMS producer will have some sort of reference manuals targeting their own product, but they tend to be biased and sometime will use proprietary extensions.
EDITED: The aim of the question was to focus on the things database engines have in common i.e. the SQL roots. But understanding the differences can also be a positive thing - this is quite interesting.
Here's the ‘Second Informal Review Draft’ of SQL:1992, which seems to have been accurate enough for everything I've looked up. 1992 covers most of the stuff routinely used across DBMSs.
SQL isn't like C or Java, where there is a standard for the language, and then a number of companies and organizations are implementing the language as best they can, following the standard.
Instead, the major databases came before the SQL standard, and the standard is a sort of compromise where every database vendor wanted to get their particular dialect and features in the standard.
Therefore, there is much more variety between databases than between typical programming language compilers, and to use a database, you really need to know that particular SQL dialect.
Having said that, I've got Gultzan and Peltzer's SQL-99 Complete, Really here in my bookshelf. It is a good book if you need to know what the standard really contains. (And yes, there is a newer version since SQL-99, but noone seems to care.)
EDIT: Actually, there is not just one newer version since SQL-99, but three: SQL:2003, SQL:2006, and SQL:2008. And still noone seems to care. Actually, many don't even care about SQL-99, so SQL-92 is still, in a way, "the standard".
ANSI documents can all be purchased from -- you guessed it -- ANSI.
http://webstore.ansi.org/
The main problem with an ANSI SQL reference manual is that you can't find a DB which implements it. And when it does, then you'll find that ANSI SQL can't solve some of the daily problems. Which is why all professional databases define extensions.
So at work, you'll need a reference manual for the specific version of the database which you use.
This reminds me of my 2nd year university course where we learn relational theory instead of SQL.
Read a good book on Relational Theory. Database theory and practice have evolved since Edgar Codd originally defined the relational model back in 1969. Independent of any SQL products, SQL and Relational Theory draws on decades of research to present the most up-to-date treatment of the material available anywhere. Anyone with a modest to advanced background in SQL will benefit from the many insights in this book.
Oreilly January 2009
I found the best way to learn SQL was to actually get to writing queries and understanding the nature of joins/conditionals etc. I found this link with a lot of DIY examples to be the best : http://sqlzoo.net/
It's a littel outdated, but this book is really helpful is looking at how the differnt vendors implement things, I belive it includes ANSII standard.
http://www.amazon.com/SQL-Nutshell-2nd-Kevin-Kline/dp/0596004818/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257963172&sr=8-1
I really like just about anything Joe Celko has written Celko's Books
I think this may be helpful to you.
Understanding the ANSI SQL standard
By: Kevin Kline
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565927443/102-0105946-4028970?v=glance&n=283155
The DevGuru resources always worked well for me:
http://www.devguru.com/technologies/t-sql/home.asp
Although I must admit it's not strictly an 'ANSI' focused resource. I've always been MS SQL centric, and it was helpful to me when I was starting out. IMHO Your best bet will be to use several resources - specifically including at least one of for each DB platform you want to use.
To Quote the DevGuru intro for their T-SQL resource:
Although there are standards for SQL,
such as ANSI SQL92 and SQL99, most
databases use their own dialect and/or
extentions. Microsoft's flavor of SQL
used in SQL Server 7 and SQL Server
2000 is called T-SQL. While many of
the examples in this quick reference
may work on other databases, it is
assumed that SQL Server 2000 is used,
especially for advanced topics such as
stored procedures.
My team is looking into geospatial features offered by different database platforms.
Are all of the implementations database specific, or is there a ANSI SQL standard, or similar type of standard, which is being offered, or will be offered in the future?
I ask, because I would like the implemented code to be as database agnostic as possible (our project is written to be ANSI SQL standard).
Is there any known plan for standardization of this functionality in the future?
Currently, there are more than one specifications followed by popular proprietary and open source implementations of spatial databases:
The OpenGIS - Simple Features for SQL
ISO SQL Multimedia Specification for Spatial - ISO/IEC 13249-3:2006 - Information technology -- Database languages -- SQL multimedia and application packages -- Part 3: Spatial
PostGIS, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and to some limited degree MySQL, all the databases implement the standard interfaces to manipulate spatial data. However, in spite of this fairly standardized features, all databases usually differ on simple SQL level what may make the database-agnostic implementation of your solution tricky. You likely need to survey the features you are interested and compare what various vendors provide.
For example GIS extensions for MySQL and for PostgreSQL both follow OpenGIS "Simple Features Specification for SQL" standard.
I haven't tried it, but Google tells me FDO is "an open-source API for manipulating, defining and analyzing geospatial information regardless of where it is stored". It's listed on osgeo.org - a point in its favour in my opinion.
There are providers for MySQL & Oracle. Disappointingly though SQL Server and Postgis aren't listed on the FDO providers page.
The only standard I know of is http://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/sfs and I don't know how well all the spatial database extensions implement it.
there are a number of geo-databases which are accessible with hibernate spatial
Oracle10g
Postgresql
MySQL
using an abtraction layer like hibernate is a good idea anyways, if you plan to write a database agnostic application. hibernatespatial fills this gap for geo features.