[R-sig-DB] SQL generics

[Paul Gilbert]

I would like to echo David's point even more strongly. Only a few of the 
packages I have that use DBI actually have an SQL backend. The others 
really only use part of the class structure and methods:  DBIConnection, 
DBIDriver, dbDisconnect. They use DBI so that I can present an API that 
is consistent with the SQL based packages.

I would be happy to see the upper part of the classes and methods moved 
entirely into a separate package from all the SQL. (And it would make my 
life easier if this part remained really stable once it is set.)

Paul


On 13-10-23 08:31 AM, David James wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I can see an SQL generation tool as a handy thing to have, but probably best
> implemented in a separate package.
>
> Regards,
>
> David
>
>
> On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Hadley Wickham <h.wickham using gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I wonder if it might be useful to start developing a new set of
>> generics for SQL generation. A reasonable target would be the subset
>> of SQL-92 grammar defined for minimal ODBC compliance:
>> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms711725(v=vs.85).aspx
>>
>> That would lead to the following functions which dispatch on the
>> connection and and return a SQL vector as output (possibly of length >
>> 1). Default methods would be SQL-92 compatible, and provide a
>> reference implementation for package authors to see how to best deal
>> with escaping.
>>
>> * `sqlCreateTable(conn, table, fields, ...)`
>> * `sqlDeleteFrom(conn, table, where, ...)`
>> * `sqlDropTable(conn, table, ...)`
>> * `sqlInsertInto(conn, table, values, ...)`
>> * `sqlUpdate(conn, table, values, ...)`
>>
>> Note that I have deliberately not included `sqlSelect()` in this list,
>> because the grammar of the select statement is so much more
>> complicated in general, and varies considerably more between
>> databases. I'd suggest not including it in a first pass.
>>
>> With `dbSendQuery()`, these could also be used to provide default
>> implementations of `dbWriteTable()`, and `dbDropTable()`.
>> Implementators would almost always override `dbWriteTable()` to
>> provide a more efficient implementation for bulk data loading.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> Hadley
>>
>> --
>> Chief Scientist, RStudio
>> http://had.co.nz/
>>
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