Le lundi 11 Décembre 2006 11:45, Moose a écrit :
> Chris Barker wrote:
> > Heh! I am just looking through "PHP & MySql for Dummies", learning
> > about the structure of SQL databases thinking that it looks rather
> > similar to horrid old Acc*ss :-)
Any database engine able to split records among tables looks about the same
from a casual viewpoint. But Access is horrid because it's a kludge, not
because databases are horrid. I prefer postgresql over MySQL, myself, because
there are less proprietary extension in pgsql.
> Structured Query Language is a tool for extracting data from databases,
Not to nitpick, but it's much more than that ; SQL is the product of more than
10 years of fundamental researches at IBM in the 60s in the field of formal
grammars and other fun subjects, so to call it 'a tool' is a bit understated.
SQL is a true work of beauty. So friendly anyone can ask any database anything
in near regular english from a teletype (an electronic typewriter hooked on a
serial port) ; so complex no database engine I know of has yet implemented
the standard fully, not even Oracle.
> Access can also create SQL queries for use against other databases.
This is something I can't understand. SQL is tailored for human use. Computer
generated requests are suboptimal, and it's not like SQL is difficult to
master from a user perspective (I'm not talking about database administration
here). So why fiddle with that layer of dumbification ?
Some years ago, outside of the scope of my normal activities, I was asked by
my superior if I could possibly get some data back from a very big info
system (I'm intentionaly vague on exact circumstances, I just shall say this
sytem hold sensitive personal data on many people including children) ; so I
said, ok, I'll peek a look. And I discovered the whole database was a really
silly collection, never vacuumed, and basically without control. In fact it
was so dumb that if you used anything to access the sql server but the
official frontend, you had full access over everything (including staff
salaries, budgets, etc.). So I fired from memory a couple of sql requests,
found the needed data, and made a small demo afterward to show what I thought
of the system. Exposing the biggest salary in the process. And afterward,
guess who was in trouble ?
Yep, you get it ; it certainly wasn't the pig who made the system with a sql
generator. But nevermind, I was holding them so tight with this that the
whole thing settled down on its own.
--
Manuel Viet
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