Re: Substitute operators...

Others have pointed out as well in private mail to me (at least I haven't seen them as posts yet) that there is a product called Informix SQL. That's right of course, and I should have thought of that. Florin Micle doesn't use that however, but dbaccess. His comparison is with PL/SQL from Oracle. All these names containing SQL doeas create quite a lot of confusion and it's sad that companies have used them for their products. When people use Oracle and say they use SQL often they seem to mean they use PL/SQL which isn't SQL at all in any sense of the word. It's instead a programinglanguage in which one can directly embed SQL. SQL refers only to one thing, namely SQL as defined by the ANSI (or other standardisation organisations. Some probably want to include extentions supported by some database engines. To claim that everything included in PL/SQL by Oracle or similar extentions in Sybase engines is still SQL and should be refered to by the consept of SQL does nothing but confuse our language. Therefore Informix SQL is a very unfortunate product name as is PL/SQL. Now the solution to Florin's problems does not lie in the Informix SQL product but rather in using sqlcmd (see IIUG software library at http://www.iiug.org/software/software_index.html), Perl with DBI/DBD for Informix, a programming language like 4GL or similar products. I don't know what Florin is programming, but it seems to be something that's going to be used by some user, not some simple scripts that shall be used every now and then by system adiministrators or others with significant computer and database knowledge. For that purpose some true programming language is usually the best solution. You would normally want to stay in full controll whatever the user tries to do and give sensible error messages to bad input. You want a tool that's capable of handling that in every respect. On Wed, 19 Aug 1998 08:41:47 -0500, Matthew Reprogle <mcreprog@ictest.delcoelect.com> wrote: >Nils Myklebust wrote: > >> On Wed, 12 Aug 1998 12:20:30 +0200, "Florin Micle" >> <florinmicle@gsc-mbh.de> wrote: >> >> >Is there any substitute operator in Informix sql, like '&' in Oracle? >> >I want to use an index name in a variable. >> >Can I do something like >> >drop index index_name, where index_name is a variable containing the index>> >name? >> >> There is no product called Informix sql. With Informix you use sql as >> a part of different other products. In dbaccess you can only use plain >> sql. There is no language with variables, control structures and the >> like in the product itself. You can however create and execute stored >> procedures that includes a programming language. That's documented in >> one of the sql manuals available at http://www.informix.com/answers >> You can however not do what you ask in spl. >> >> If you want to do things like you describe you will want to use some >> programming language. For simple things you can use Perl or Informix >> 4GL. With 4GL you can of course also create advanced applications, but >> it's very well suited for creating simple solutions including ad hoc >> things as well. For Perl you will want DBD::Informix that you can find >> at http://www.perl.com/CPAN >> >> Nils Myklebust >> NM Data AS >> Norway >> E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com >> FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html >> (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".) > >Of course there is a product called Informix SQL. It is a client-only >application the functions pretty much just like dbaccess, but is purchased >standalone without the server product. > >-- >Matt Reprogle >IS Engineer, Delphi Delco Electronics Systems >phone:(765)451-9651 FAX: (765)451-8230 mcreprog@ictest.delcoelect.com > > > Nils Myklebust NM Data AS Norway E-mail: Nils.Myklebust@nmdata.com FAQ at: http://www.iiug.org/techinfo/faq/faq_top.html (Now with ODBC info under "Third party products".)