June 1998 Meeting

DATE: Wednesday June 3, 1998 TIME: 6:00pm - 8:00pm TOPIC: Complex SQL (nested subqueries)

As per our discussion in last month's meeting, one of our member, Mike Schuler, will be giving a presentation titled "DBsurfer: complex SQL (defined as involving nested subqueries) can be a no-brainer".

DBsurfer fulfills the promise of virtually unbounded ad-hoc querying with an error-free interface to complex SQL that permits first-time users of the product to become productive within minutes of installation.

The product features a new technology: dynamic menus, which provide a structured English interface that totally shields the user from syntactic/semantic errors. The product uses an intermediate language: QBE. This grid-like language is a superset of the more familiar products on the market and seamlessly generates SQL subqueries.

Although DBsurfer is currently in beta as a post-graduate educational tool and is packaged as an enduser product, we intend to make it available to developers as a DLL. In this form the product could have a simple DLL "wrapper", a complex set of functions down to the GUI level, or a few major functions returning SQL and/or a database answers.

There are two purposes in presenting it to the VDDG:

- to demonstrate its current functionality - potentially useable as a loosely-coupled SQL generator for more demanding SQL projects
- to obtain feedback based on that demonstration, regarding the type of DLL/component Delphi developers might like to see for DBsurfer