Subject: Re: CAP: Badly formed SQL

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 17:20:07 -0500

Doug wrote:
>And we agreed the syntax would be SQL. And in DC we reviewed the
>proposal made in Orlando and decided that it would be SQL syntax
>if at all possible.

Not 100% in accordance with the postings in the archives

>We also agreed that we would *not* have an SQL-like syntax

We did not!  I was in DC and recall no such agreement.  To confirm I just 
dont have a faulty memory I went back to the archives.  Searching I found 
the following relevant postings on using SQL or an alternative. 

On 5-Apr-1999, Pat posted the "Minutes of 44th IETF CALSCH sessions" which contain:

>Why is it not just SQL?  We already have concept of name=value so use
>it.  Still, why just not use SQL?? Don't want to get raw SQL data that
>doesn't map 100% to iCal.  Stuff in SQL may not be desirable now (ie:
>weighting of results) but may want later.  If we use SQL syntax then we
>gain an already understood behavior;  We just didn't want to get the
>mods that we?d have to make to avoid non-doable stuff (ie: ?today?);
>There could be problems w/vendor extensions of SQL that dont interop so
>a strict separate syntax prevents that. Revisit on the list (did in Dec
>98 but no responses). 

On 21-May-1999, she posted the "Atlanta Minutes - WARNING Large document" which contained:

>Need to revisit SQL like query - Doug to work on this
[Some SQL tech diving and]
>Need to revisit SQL/SQL like query issues (Doug) - 2 wks
>- Iteration on result
>- Searching (parametric/content)
>- Clarify maxresults semantics

10-Dec-1999, she posted the "CALSCH DC Minutes" which has:

>The query subset needs more work.  It's modeled after SQL.  Queries are 
>non-trivial so we chose sql-like, rather than force implementors to 
>force SQL implementation.  We came up with a subset.  Need to guarantee 
>that queries look a certain way.  Need to put together a small set of 
>queries. 
>
>It was suggested that if someone has an SQL engine could they use it. 
>Syntax is ical - structure is SQL.  There was a broad discussion about 
>putting SQL in place. 

Note that the 3rd sentence of the DC notes says we WOULD use SQL-like, not 
SQL...

I tried to find some Orlando meeting minutes but none show up in my 
archives.  I could have missed 'em so I searched for "Orlando" and "SQL" 
and I found only 1 relevant posting.  On 3-Mar-1999 Doug replied to John 
under the subject "Re: CAP Searching Proposal" with:

>The problem with the DASL proposal is that its ~almost~ SQL. And I think
>that is an issue. I talked to Alex Hoppman about this in Orlando;
>he told me the reason that its NOT SQL, is because they needed some
>features that were not in SQL. I still don't see why they can't say
>is SQL (version xxx) + plus this or - that's our plan.

I think that all this SQL legal and SQL vs SQL-like traffic is just 
spinning wheels since its not something the WG has agreed on.  Perhaps 
once I catch up w/the backlog from the past few days Ill find it all moot 
but I want it to be clear that we never did accept SQL (any version) as 
the query lingua despite claims to the contrary.

Bruce
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Bruce Kahn                                INet: 
[email-masked]
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---

From: Doug Royer <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 16:55:01 -0700

[email-masked] wrote:

> ...
> once I catch up w/the backlog from the past few days Ill find it all
> moot but I want it to be clear that we never did accept SQL (any
> version) as the query lingua despite claims to the contrary.

<NOISE-TO-MANY>

I was the one that accepted the assignment for the query language
in Dallas. Yes - there was debate as you have pointed out in the notes
that you have found. However even the IMC archives don't seem to
have all of the email - I have looked.

My current argument includes "NO ONE ELSE PROPOSED ANYTHING FOR THREE 
YEARS" - except me. That is one of the reasons that I believe the
consensus was as I stated. Now as you know we don't have to reach 100% 
agreement. But NO ONE ELSE proposed anything. WE went through
the first 0-5 revisions of CAP and there was only SOME debate
on this topic. NO ONE proposed any other query language including
you. Until a couple of days ago when John posted his thoughts
about an XML-query. Frank and I developed this query language by
sitting down in Orlando for two half days and we presented it to
the the WG then. We provided updates in the following IETF meetings.
Some did suggest that it be SQL-like, but they proposed nothing
substantial - and NO written proposals that anyone else could read.

The original Orlando proposal was something like this:

	QUERY:<select clause>;<from clause>;<optional-where-clause>

Each time we tried to expand the above format, people kept
saying "In sql I can ...". So we altered it to be SQL. In Oslo
I again got the green light. People seemed to want it to be SQL
if at all possible - but NOT require the CS to be an SQL database.
And the quotes you point out I remember as being "Only if SQL
does not work, will we consider SQL-like" - And that is exactly
what we are doing now. Even now when we are trying to determine
the exact features we want, people over time keep adding needs
for the query language.

This did not just spring up over night. It has been in process
for about three years and only now are people *thankfully* 
giving it serious thought. 

The WG talked us into having it more like SQL. The IETF members
that participated in other working groups, including LDAP and WebDav
urged us to adopt a more SQL query language because of their 
experiences and the pain they went through to develop a query language.
I know this because I networked at the IETF meeting and asked
the people that had or were developing query languages what they
thought.

By searching those same archives for sender=kahn and body
contains 'query' or 'sql', I can not find that you had any
objections to the query language as proposed (until recently) and
I looked back to March 26 1996. Not that you can't object. But
that has been the proposal since about Orlando (Dec 1998).
Often silence is the best indicator of consensus - and on
the topic of query language - we had suggestions for improvement,
and NO counter proposals for three years - looks like
concenses to me :-)

</NOISE-TO-MANY>

I think that the recent debates have resulted in a happy
medium. And that we are getting closer to shipping CAP.