H2 Database Liaison Report

To:	J3

From:	Craig Dedo

Date:	November 8, 2003

Subject:	H2 Database Liaison Report

Following is the Liaison Report with H2 Database. This report is based on an e-mail conversation with Fred Zemke, the H2 Liaison to J3.

SQL:2003 is in FDIS ballot. Most of the significant new functionality in SQL:2003 is in a new part, SQL/XML, dealing with integrating SQL and XML. This part is continuing to receive a lot of work, and H2 hopes to publish the next edition of just this part in 2005.

The H2 connection with Fortran is solely concerned with data types, what H2 calls "bindings", which are associations between database types and programming language types. The SQL standard has done almost no work on bindings in many years, meaning that the SQL bindings are pretty much the same as they were in SQL-92. Assuming that Fortran has not done any incompatible changes to types since then (such as deleting a type) H2 is probably pretty safe. SQL's own type system grew a lot with the introduction of Object/Relational in SQL:1999, but H2 did not make any effort to update the bindings to take advantage of object technology in host languages. H2 could still do this, but there may not be the time or inclination.

Unfortunately, the SQL Standards Web site, http://www.sqlstandards.org, is often down much of the time. According to Fred Zemke, the problem is that it is a volunteer site run by an unemployed former member who has been going back to college, so he does not have much time or resources, though he does try pretty hard. Usually he gets it up again in a day.

I believe that it is highly desirable to send a message to H2 about the Fortran 2003 FCD. Fred Zemke asked me, "I saw an announcement that Fortran has progressed to FCD status, is that right?" Based on this question, I believe that we should send H2 either an official or informal message about the release of Fortran 2003 FCD, the relevant dates, and the location(s) of the documents, and procedures for responding with comments. I would like to see such a message modeled after the announcement that Van Snyder posted on comp.lang.fortran on October 25, with some additional material that David Muxworthy included in his message on the comp-fortran-90 mailing list about the UK comment process. Following is my recommendation for a message to H2.

[Begin message to H2]

The official public comment period for the Final Committee Draft (FCD) for the next standard for Fortran, to be commonly known as Fortran 2003, has been announced by ANSI. Here is the official announcement:

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The public review comment period for ISO/IEC FCD 1539-1 is from October 31, 2003 to December 15, 2003. Public review comments that contain technical information are permissible at the final committee draft stage.

A copy of the ISO/IEC FCD 1539-1 can be downloaded from: http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocstore/default.asp.

If it is the intent of the commentor to have his/her comments formally registered, a copy of the comments should be emailed to: Deborah J. Spittle at dspittle@itic.org and to PSA Dept. at psa@ansi.org

The will be posted every 2 weeks to the following url: http://www.incits.org/archive/2003/in031280/in031280.htm.

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All comments will receive individual attention. Comments that notice typographical errors, difficult exposition, or inconsistencies are especially welcome. Although any comment is permissible, it is not likely that substantial technical changes will be undertaken at this time in the revision cycle.

The Fortran FCD document is also at http://www.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/open/n3661.pdf (4.0Mb) and is available from ftp://ftp.j3-fortran.org/j3/doc/standing/007/ in compressed PDF, postscript and plain text formats (file sizes respectively 2.2Mb, 1.0Mb, 394Kb).

Readers who have not been following recent developments in detail might useful a summary of the principal new features of the language. This is at ftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1551-N1600/N1579.pdf or ftp://ftp.nag.co.uk/sc22wg5/N1551-N1600/N1579.ps.gz (file sizes 101Kb and 59Kb respectively).

Readers outside of the USA should submit comments through their own standards body.

[End of message to H2]

[End of J3 / 03-268]