Personally I also do not feel we need an XML form of ADQL.
But at IVOA meetings there was a general request to have ADQL in XML
format. I made a stab at and XML format. Modified it etc ...
This of course may be discussed again at the meeting.
Even internal to SkyServer there is some parsing going on as Clive
suggests. People generally felt having a parsed version would help
in this area.
We are aware of some of the problems mentioned especially with java. Vivek is currently working on this and I believe will post some new tutorials etc in the coming days.
wil
On Sat, Jan 31, 2004 at 04:40:11PM +0000, Clive Page wrote:
> On Fri, 30 Jan 2004, Noel Winstanley wrote:
>
> > I tried and I failed.
> >
> > I can;t get any joy with the latest version of ADQL.
>
> > I'm really beginning to wonder whether ADQL is the most suitable query
> > language for astrogrid datacenters. What are its benefits?
>
> I agree with your comments, Noel, and I've been asking for some time why
> we need ADQL. The only answer I was able to get was that it made the
> checking of the query simpler and improves security. I am not convinced
> that we need to be all that fussy in checing syntax: if the user generates
> the query from our menu-style registry-driven portal then it will be hard
> to make a syntax mistake; power users who generate their own SQL by typing
> it into a text box will find out soon enough if they make a mistake: any
> DBMS parses the query and returns an error message instantly. The
> experience of JHU with their skyserver was given at the last ADASS meeting
> by Wil O'Mullane: indeed he made a mistake in his live demo and got a
> message back, allowing him to correct it. This isn't a perfectly
> user-friendly system, but it seems adequate to me. As far as security
> goes, a simple solution initially is to restrict the first keyword of any
> query to be SELECT, and in particular prevent non-authenticated users from
> issuing DROP or DELETE statements. Later, maybe, we can allow things like
> CREATE TABLE, INSERT, UPDATE, and so on. That shouldn't be all that hard
> even without ADQL.
>
>
> --
> Clive Page
> Dept of Physics & Astronomy,
> University of Leicester, Tel +44 116 252 3551
> Leicester, LE1 7RH, U.K. Fax +44 116 252 3311
Received on 2004-01-31Z20:31:18