On Thursday, October 21, 1999 10:20, Kumaran N S writes:

> This is regarding the Allbase "AS Clause" Enhancement. The Database LAB
> is working on the AS Clause Enhancement.

<rest snipped>

Praise be to the person who finally pushed this through!

Currently things like this are returned as "EXPR(n)" - complete with
parenthesis, but without the quotes - and "n" is a digit.  This might be
find for host-based applications, but it wreaks havoc for any other tool
utilizing ODBC.  There's nothing wrong with EXPR, or the digit, but the
parenthesis are not legal characters for column names in ANSI SQL.

To get around this, one must write a view, or even a stored procedure, to
get this information into a column name that is not EXPR(n).

Consider this my vote in the affirmative for an AS clause, as defined by the
standards.  The next to be looked at is the same problem with MAX(x),
MIN(x), COUNT(x)... which also return EXPR(n).  This should probably be in
the same area.

As for additional input from users, look at the standard for SELECT,
implement AS as shown and Allbase (and subsequently, Image/SQL) will then be
up to the standard.

Some examples:

SELECT SELL_PRICE AS X FROM DB.INV_MASTER

Column returned is "X" - not EXPR(0) - which is what is returned today.

SELECT MAX(SELL_PRICE) FROM DB.INV_MASTER

Column should be returned as SELL_PRICE, not EXPR(0)

SELECT MAX(SELL_PRICE) AS HIGH_SELL_PRICE FROM DB.INV_MASTER

Column should be returned as HIGH_SELL_PRICE, not EXPR(0)

My US$0.02 worth...  Thanks again for looking at this!

Regards,
Joe

====================================================
Joe Geiser, Managing Partner
BizNetTech.net LLC
Phone: +1(215) 945.8100   Fax: +1(215) 943.8408
Toll Free (US/Canada): (877) 945.8100
====================================================