Re: [gnome-db] Per-table meta-data with capital letters in the table name?

[Vivien Malerba <vmalerba gmail com>]

2009/7/17 Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>

>         You added a section about SQL Identifiers that mentions
>         quotes:
>
>         But I find this surprising, and I doubt that it's true:
>         http://git.gnome.org/cgit/libgda/tree/doc/C/libgda-4.0-docs.sgml#n465
>         "
>         Many people consider that using the quoted syntax should be
>         avoided if
>         possible because:
>         - once an SQL identifier has been defined using the quoted
>         syntax, it
>         must always be used quoted, which is error prone especially if
>         external
>         tools are used on the database.
>         "
>
> From my own experience and from what I've gathered from other people
> and from the misc docs and books, this is a kind of personnal
> recommendation I'd do. I added it in the doc to explain that Libgda
> could not force people to use quotes all the time. I can remove it if
> you think it's out of topic or is out of Libgda's scope.

If you don't know that it's _true_ then, yes, please remove it.

If it's not true then I am concerned that it's the basis of your API
choices.

I'll remove that part then as it reflects my own opinion and is out of topic for Libgda's documentation. About the basis of the API choices, I had to make _representation_ choices as I did not want Libgda's user to depend on knowing all the databases quirks.
 

>         2.
>         The latest documentation is not online yet because it is not
>         yet in a
>         tarball, so I can't link to it, but I've built it locally.
>
>         I still can't see anything in the
>         gda_connection_update_meta_store() (or
>         anything linked from there) about whether or not we should use
>         gda_sql_identifier_add_quotes() for the "table_name" value in
>         GdaMataContext::column_values.
>
>         The "Update the meta data about a table" section doesn't use
>         gda_sql_identifier_add_quotes(), though we now seem to need to
>         use it in
>         libgdamm. Note that that section mentions a "Get information"
>         section,
>         but there is no link.
>
>         3.
>         In fact, I don't see any link from GdaMetaContext to a
>         description of
>         possible values for the GdaMetaContext field structs, though
>         the
>         gda_connection_update_meta_store() documentation mentios
>         "_tables" and
>         "_columns" as possible values for GdaMetaContext::table_name.
>
>         The "database structure" section provides some hints, but the
>         documentation should explain how that maps to GdaMetaContext."
>
> Sorry I've been so long to answer, but I've been busy fixing the SQL
> identifiers mess (there are so many differences between databases in
> details...)
> Anyway, I've just pushed in git LIBGDA_4.0 branch,

Oh, I suggested in bugzilla that you keep these changes out of stable
4.0, because it all seems so fragile. But OK, if it works it will be
useful there.

I put them in 4.0 because I think this is a correction, not an improvement, and early because I think it's easier to maintain 2 branches at the same level than merge a big chunk in one time.

If it works correctly, I'll make a 4.0.3 release soon.
 

This is all in master (4.1) too, right?

It will be ASAP, yes.
 

>  some fixes in the gda_sql_identifier_quote() function which you can
> use in Glom, along with a test case (which I'll soon add to the NR
> tests directory), attached (for the PostgreSQL and MySQL you need to
> create an empty "testcase" database).
>
> Basically, you have an SQL Id (presumably entered by the user), and
> use gda_sql_identifier_quote(id,...,FALSE,...) to have a valid SQL
> identifier to create a database object (for example a table), and use
> again gda_sql_identifier_quote(id,...,TRUE,...) with
> gda_connection_update_meta_store() or other GdaMetaStore's related
> functions. See the test case in the attachment.
>
> I'll apply the modifications to the master branch and fix all the
> documentation which needs to be fixed ASAP.

Thanks. I'll take a proper look when the documentation is at
library.gnome.org (when a tarball has been released).

I've almost fixed the docs locally. If you want I can send you a tarball of the documentation so  you can have a look before it's on library.gnome.org. Tell me if you want it.

Vivien