Re: What is SAMeDL?

[gary@intrepid.com (Gary Funck)]

In article <4128@map.mdavcr.mda.ca> alan@mdavcr.mda.ca (Alan Carruthers) writes:
>SAMeDL stands for SQL Ada Module Description Language, used to interface
>Ada applications to SQL-based DBMS's.  That's the limit of my knowledge
>on SAMeDL.  Does anyone know how I can find out more about SAMeDL?

Alan,  by now I'm sure others will have responded with contact
information for Marc Graham (marc@sei.cmu.edu), who has done most
of the groundwork for SAMeDL.  Also, I believe that the SAMeDL
docs.  are available via FTP from the Software Engineering Institute
(SEI).  The documentation will include the proposed ISO standard
for SAMeDL.

Perhaps not mentioned, will be the ANSI SQL Module Language Standard for
Ada, which is part of the Embedded SQL standard (along with the
ever popular ESQL/C, ESQL/COBOL, etc).  The Module Language defines
a mostly language independent way of defining "modules" that access
a database using SQL.  The modules correspond to Ada packages, and
the Ada implmentation of SQL Module Language maps modules directly
to packages.

ANSI SQL Module Language is a simpler, older standard.  When applied to
Ada, there are constraints on the types of parameters passed to
the Ada packages and this can constrain the Ada programmer's use
of the Ada type system.  Other than that, SQL Module Language is
an effective tool for accessing SQL capabilities from Ada (and other
languages).

SAMeDL counters the limitations of ANSI Module Language with
a fairly complex meta-description of "type templates" that amount
to a kind of type-checked macro facility.  These templates can
be expanded into Ada packages that in turn access the database
using SQL.  Intermetrics has done an implementation of SAMeDL,
also a German company, CCI, is supposed to be working on an
implementation (contact: Rudolf Landwehr, landwehr@cci.de).

Informix (among others) has an implementation of standard SQL Module
Language for Ada, with extensions aimed at accessing all the SQL
capabilities offered by the vendor (Informix in this case).  The
product name is Ada/SAME.  (SAME = Standard ANSI Module language
with Extensions).  Contact John Skier at Informix (johns@informix.com),
or your local Informix rep. for details.

Having been involved in the development of Ada/SAME, I'm quite
aware of the limitations of SQL Module Language, but do not have
direct experience with SAMeDL and other approaches used to interface
Ada programs to a relational database, based on SQL.

What is the experience of others on the net, regarding actual use
of SAMeDL, Ada/SAME, ESQL/Ada and other related products?  What were
the limitations and strong points? 

    - Gary
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| Gary Funck  		    gary@intrepid.com  [uunet!uupsi!intrepid!gary]
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