Prospective agenda for VOQL session in Madrid

[Patricio F. Ortiz]

Hi Yuji,

On Wed, 21 Sep 2005, Yuji SHIRASAKI wrote:
> Hi, 
> 
> > I have a concern respect to the case in which column names contain "funny"
> > characters ( (), [], ' and ", -, . etc ). I've seen a number of them
> > deployed in our registry and they're obviously valid names in their home
> > databases. The problem, however, arises when one wants to parse ADQL-s to
> > ADQL-x, when interpreters start complaining about non-existing functions (
> > eg, M(B) ) or they think it's an arithmetics operation (eg, B-V, -logF
> > etc).
> 
> The column name and table name which contain special characters must 
> be delimited by "[" and "]". This was discussed at the Cambrige (Boston)
> IVOA meeting (if my memory is correct).
> 
> So the valid syntax to use such column name in ADQL-s is:
> 
>   select [M(B)], [B-V], [-logF]
>   from ...
> 
> # standard SQL uses double quatations, but ADQL uses blackets.
> 
> Your parser must support this syntax, though.

Many thanks for your answer.

This sounds quite good for most of the problematic column names.

There is however, not a small number of columns (>1800) in the literature
with brackets in their names, eg, metal aboundances, forbidden or
semiforbidden transitions, etc. How are those cases supposed to be handled?

Cheers,

Patricio


---
Patricio F. Ortiz			pfo at star.le.ac.uk
Department of Physics & Astronomy	Phone: +44 (0)116 252 2015
University of Leicester			
Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK