In this first article I will describe the background to the project and talk about the development of the file format and an XSD schema. In the second article I will focus on creating a code model that maps onto the file format. The third and final article will cover a simple approach to code generation and tie up all the loose ends.
Background
I use Microsoft SQL Server (usually just known as SQL Server) regularly in a team environment. When I talk about SQL in these articles, I am really referring to Microsoft's version of the language called T-SQL, though other versions of the language could easily be addressed in the future. SQL has a long and distinguished history and is used by millions of people in all sorts of projects including mine, but this project exists because it has shortcomings that I find frustrating.
SQL is commonly used in two distinct ways; as a DDL and for CRUD queries. When a new database is created it is not only empty of data, but also empty of structure. Before data can be added (e.g. the details of a person) a table must be added to contain the data. This is done in SQL with statements such as these:
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CREATE TABLE [dbo].[EXAMPLE_TABLE](
[PK] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,
[EXAMPLE_COLUMN1] [varchar](50) NOT NULL,
)
Definition of a table called 'EXAMPLE_TABLE' with two columns; 'PK' and 'EXAMPLE_COLUMN1'.
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