Re: Prospective agenda for VOQL session in Madrid

Hi,

> I have a concern respect to the case in which column names contain "funny"
> characters ( (), [], ' and ", -, . etc ). I've seen a number of them
> deployed in our registry and they're obviously valid names in their home
> databases. The problem, however, arises when one wants to parse ADQL-s to
> ADQL-x, when interpreters start complaining about non-existing functions (
> eg, M(B) ) or they think it's an arithmetics operation (eg, B-V, -logF
> etc).

The column name and table name which contain special characters must be delimited by "[" and "]". This was discussed at the Cambrige (Boston) IVOA meeting (if my memory is correct).

So the valid syntax to use such column name in ADQL-s is:

  select [M(B)], [B-V], [-logF]
  from ...

# standard SQL uses double quatations, but ADQL uses blackets.

Your parser must support this syntax, though.

---
Yuji SHIRASAKI, Research Fellow             +81-422-34-3579 (tel)
National Astronomical Observatory of Japan  +81-422-34-3840 (fax)
Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan                 yuji.shirasaki-at-nao.ac.jp