MySQL Bugs: #44739: More Detailed Documentation For SQL Standard Compliance

Bug #44739	More Detailed Documentation For SQL Standard Compliance
Submitted:	8 May 2009 7:10	Modified:	8 May 2009 14:09
Reporter:	Mikiya Okuno	Email Updates:
Status:	Won't fix	Impact on me:	None
Category:	MySQL Server: Documentation	Severity:	S4 (Feature request)
Version:		OS:	Any
Assigned to:	Paul DuBois	CPU Architecture:	Any

Description:
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/compatibility.html

The manual says "one of our main goals with the product is to continue to work toward compliance with the SQL standard" and "our aim is to support the full ANSI/ISO SQL standard".

However, this doesn't say "We follow SQL standards" at all, and we do not follow SQL standards in fact. No commercial RDBMS is 100% compliant with any of the SQL specs though.

In order to provide better compatibility with other RDBMS for easier development, we should document some more details about SQL standard compliance.

How to repeat:
n/a

Suggested fix:
A matrix which states where is SQL standard compliant and where is not is the best solution for this problem.

The section referenced in the manual serves as a general
statement of intent, but of course the developers are
free to make implementation decisions as they think best,
which may or may not follow the standard. If you have
specific items that you think should be listed, we can
consider including them, but otherwise we will leave it
as is.

I think that the matrix sql conformance helps cutomers to know an overview for MySQL features. (e.g. Is there any MERGE statement or alternative, Does MySQL support ROLE or something?) After releasing MySQL 5.x, MySQL supported many features, so it is time to make such a matrix, isn't it?

Some Opensource Databases's document provide a matrix for SQL conformance.

PostgreSQL provides the matrix for SQL conformance like this,
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/interactive/features.html

Firebird also provide the matrix like this,
http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=devel&sub=engine&id=SQL_conformance