• NAME
• SUPPORTED PLATFORMS
• SYNOPSIS
• DESCRIPTION
• Creating a parser object
• Parsing a query
• Retrieving query information
• Evaluating a WHERE clause
• Evaluating queries
• SQL syntax
• CREATE
• DROP
• INSERT
• DELETE
• UPDATE
• SELECT
• INSTALLATION
• INTERNALS
• Perl-independent C part
• Perl-dependent C part
• Perl part
• The sql_stmt_t structure
• The WHERE clause evaluation
• Features
• MULTITHREADING
• AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT
• SEE ALSO

NAME

SQL::Statement - SQL parsing and processing engine

SUPPORTED PLATFORMS

• Linux
• Solaris
• Windows

SYNOPSIS

    require SQL::Statement;

    # Create a parser
    my($parser) = SQL::Statement->new('Ansi');

    # Parse an SQL statement
    $@ = '';
    my ($stmt) = eval {
        SQL::Statement->new("SELECT id, name FROM foo WHERE id > 1",
                            $parser);
    };
    if ($@) {
        die "Cannot parse statement: $@";
    }

    # Query the list of result columns;
    my $numColums = $stmt->columns();  # Scalar context
    my @columns = $stmt->columns();    # Array context
    # @columns now contains SQL::Statement::Column instances

    # Likewise, query the tables being used in the statement:
    my $numTables = $stmt->tables();   # Scalar context
    my @tables = $stmt->tables();      # Array context
    # @tables now contains SQL::Statement::Table instances

    # Query the WHERE clause; this will retrieve an
    # SQL::Statement::Op instance
    my $where = $stmt->where();

    # Evaluate the WHERE clause with concrete data, represented
    # by an SQL::Eval object
    my $result = $stmt->eval_where($eval);

    # Execute a statement:
    $stmt->execute($data, $params);

DESCRIPTION

For installing the module, see INSTALLATION below.

The SQL::Statement module implements a small, abstract SQL engine. This module is not usefull itself, but as a base class for deriving concrete SQL engines. The implementation is designed to work fine with the DBI driver DBD::CSV, thus probably not so well suited for a larger environment, but I'd hope it is extendable without too much problems.

By parsing an SQL query you create an SQL::Statement instance. This instance offers methods for retrieving syntax, for WHERE clause and statement evaluation.

Creating a parser object

What's accepted as valid SQL, depends on the parser object. There is a set of so-called features that the parsers may have or not. Usually you start with a builtin parser:

    my $parser = SQL::Parser->new($name, [ \%attr ]);

Currently two parsers are builtin: The Ansi parser implements a proper subset of ANSI SQL. (At least I hope so. :-) The SQL::Statement parser is used by the DBD:CSV driver.

You can query or set individual features. Currently available are:

create.type_blob

create.type_real

create.type_text

These enable the respective column types in a CREATE TABLE clause. They are all disabled in the Ansi parser, but enabled in the SQL::Statement parser. Example:

select.join

This enables the use of multiple tables in a SELECT statement, for example

  SELECT a.id, b.name FROM a, b WHERE a.id = b.id AND a.id = 2

To enable or disable a feature, for example select.join, use the following:

  # Enable feature
  $parser->feature("select", "join", 1);
  # Disable feature
  $parser->feature("select", "join", 0);

Of course you can query features:

  # Query feature
  my $haveSelectJoin = $parser->feature("select", "join");

The new method allows a shorthand for setting features. For example, the following is equivalent to the SQL::Statement parser:

  $parser = SQL::Statement->new('Ansi',
                                { 'create' => { 'type_text' => 1,
                                                'type_real' => 1,
                                                'type_blob' => 1 },
                                  'select' => { 'join' => 0 }});

Parsing a query

A statement can be parsed with

    my $stmt = SQL::Statement->new($query, $parser);

In case of syntax errors or other problems, the method throws a Perl exception. Thus, if you want to catch exceptions, the above becomes

    $@ = '';
    my $stmt = eval { SQL::Statement->new($query, $parser) };
    if ($@) { print "An error occurred: $@"; }

The accepted SQL syntax is restricted, though easily extendable. See SQL syntax below. See Creating a parser object above.

Retrieving query information

The following methods can be used to obtain information about a query:

command

Returns the SQL command, currently one of SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, CREATE or DROP, the last two referring to CREATE TABLE and DROP TABLE. See SQL syntax below. Example:

    my $command = $stmt->command();

columns

    my $numColumns = $stmt->columns();  # Scalar context
    my @columnList = $stmt->columns();  # Array context
    my($col1, $col2) = ($stmt->columns(0), $stmt->columns(1));

This method is used to retrieve column lists. The meaning depends on the query command:

    SELECT $col1, $col2, ... $colN FROM $table WHERE ...
    UPDATE $table SET $col1 = $val1, $col2 = $val2, ...
        $colN = $valN WHERE ...
    INSERT INTO $table ($col1, $col2, ..., $colN) VALUES (...)

When used without arguments, the method returns a list of the columns $col1, $col2, ..., $colN, you may alternatively use a column number as argument. Note that the column list may be empty, like in

    INSERT INTO $table VALUES (...)

and in CREATE or DROP statements.

But what does ``returning a column'' mean? It is returning an SQL::Statement::Column instance, a class that implements the methods table and name, both returning the respective scalar. For example, consider the following statements:

    INSERT INTO foo (bar) VALUES (1)
    SELECT bar FROM foo WHERE ...
    SELECT foo.bar FROM foo WHERE ...

In all these cases exactly one column instance would be returned with

    $col->name() eq 'bar'
    $col->table() eq 'foo'

tables

    my $tableNum = $stmt->tables();  # Scalar context
    my @tables = $stmt->tables();    # Array context
    my($table1, $table2) = ($stmt->tables(0), $stmt->tables(1));

Similar to columns, this method returns instances of SQL::Statement::Table. For UPDATE, DELETE, INSERT, CREATE and DROP, a single table will always be returned. SELECT statements can return more than one table, in case of joins. Table objects offer a single method, name which returns the table name.

params

    my $paramNum = $stmt->params();  # Scalar context
    my @params = $stmt->params();    # Array context
    my($p1, $p2) = ($stmt->params(0), $stmt->params(1));

The params method returns information about the input parameters used in a statement. For example, consider the following:

    INSERT INTO foo VALUES (?, ?)

This would return two instances of SQL::Statement::Param. Param objects implement a single method, $param-num()>, which retrieves the parameter number. (0 and 1, in the above example). As of now, not very usefull ... :-)

row_values

    my $rowValueNum = $stmt->row_values(); # Scalar context
    my @rowValues = $stmt->row_values();   # Array context
    my($rval1, $rval2) = ($stmt->row_values(0),
                          $stmt->row_values(1));

This method is used for statements like

    UPDATE $table SET $col1 = $val1, $col2 = $val2, ...
        $colN = $valN WHERE ...
    INSERT INTO $table (...) VALUES ($val1, $val2, ..., $valN)

to read the values $val1, $val2, ... $valN. It returns scalar values or SQL::Statement::Param instances.

Order

    my $orderNum = $stmt->order();   # Scalar context
    my @order = $stmt->order();      # Array context
    my($o1, $o2) = ($stmt->order(0), $stmt->order(1));

In SELECT statements you can use this for looking at the ORDER clause. Example:

    SELECT * FROM FOO ORDER BY id DESC, name

In this case, order could return 2 instances of SQL::Statement::Order. You can use the methods $o->table(), $o->column() and $o->desc() to examine the order object.

where

    my $where = $stmt->where();

This method is used to examine the syntax tree of the WHERE clause. It returns undef (if no WHERE clause was used) or an instance of SQL::Statement::Op. The Op instance offers 4 methods:

op

returns the operator, one of AND, OR, =, <>, >=, >, <=, <, LIKE, CLIKE or IS.

arg1

arg2

returns the left-hand and right-hand sides of the operator. This can be a scalar value, an SQL::Statement::Param object or yet another SQL::Statement::Op instance.

neg

returns a TRUE value, if the operation result must be negated after evalution.

To evaluate the WHERE clause, fetch the topmost Op instance with the where method. Then evaluate the left-hand and right-hand side of the operation, perhaps recursively. Once that is done, apply the operator and finally negate the result, if required.

To illustrate the above, consider the following WHERE clause:

    WHERE NOT (id > 2 AND name = 'joe') OR name IS NULL

We can represent this clause by the following tree:

              (id > 2)   (name = 'joe')
                     \   /
          NOT         AND
                         \      (name IS NULL)
                          \    /
                            OR

Thus the WHERE clause would return an SQL::Statement::Op instance with the op() field set to 'OR'. The arg2() field would return another SQL::Statement::Op instance with arg1() being the SQL::Statement::Column instance representing id, the arg2() field containing the value undef (NULL) and the op() field being 'IS'.

The arg1() field of the topmost Op instance would return an Op instance with op() eq 'AND' and neg() returning TRUE. The arg1() and arg2() fields would be Op's representing ``id > 2'' and ``name = 'joe'''.

Of course there's a ready-for-use method for WHERE clause evaluation:

Evaluating a WHERE clause

The WHERE clause evaluation depends on an object being used for fetching parameter and column values. Usually this can be an SQL::Eval object, but in fact it can be any object that supplies the methods

    $val = $eval->param($paramNum);
    $val = $eval->column($table, $column);

See the SQL::Eval manpage for a detailed description of these methods. Once you have such an object, you can call a

    $match = $stmt->eval_where($eval);

Evaluating queries

So far all methods have been concrete. However, the interface for executing and evaluating queries is abstract. That means, for using them you have to derive a subclass from SQL::Statement that implements at least certain missing methods and/or overwrites others. See the test.pl script for an example subclass.

Something that all methods have in common is that they simply throw a Perl exception in case of errors.

execute

After creating a statement, you must execute it by calling the execute method. Usually you put an eval statement around this call:

    $@ = '';
    my $rows = eval { $self->execute($data); };
    if ($@) { die "An error occurred!"; }

In case of success the method returns the number of affected rows or -1, if unknown. Additionally it sets the attributes

    $self->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'}
    $self->{'NUM_OF_ROWS'}
    $self->{'data'}

the latter being an array ref of result rows. The argument $data is for private use by concrete subclasses and will be passed through to all methods. (It is intentionally not implemented as attribute: Otherwise we might well become self referencing data structures which could prevent garbage collection.)

CREATE

DROP

INSERT

UPDATE

DELETE

SELECT

Called by execute for doing the real work. Usually they create an SQL::Eval object by calling $self->open_tables(), call $self->verify_columns() and then do their job. Finally they return the triple

    ($self->{'NUM_OF_ROWS'}, $self->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'},
     $self->{'data'})

so that execute can setup these attributes. Example:

    ($self->{'NUM_OF_ROWS'}, $self->{'NUM_OF_FIELDS'},
     $self->{'data'}) = $self->SELECT($data);

verify_columns

Called for verifying the row names that are used in the statement. Example:

    $self->verify_columns($eval, $data);

open_tables

Called for creating an SQL::Eval object. In fact what it returns doesn't need to be derived from SQL::Eval, it's completely sufficient to implement the same interface of methods. See the SQL::Eval manpage for details. The arguments $data, $createMode and $lockMode are corresponding to those of SQL::Eval::Table::open_table and usually passed through. Example:

    my $eval = $self->open_tables($data, $createMode, $lockMode);

The eval object can be used for calling $self-verify_columns> or $self-eval_where>.

open_table

This method is completely abstract and *must* be implemented by subclasses. The default implementation of $self-open_tables> calls this method for any table used by the statement. See the test.pl script for an example of imlplementing a subclass.

SQL syntax

The SQL::Statement module is far away from ANSI SQL or something similar, it is designed for implementing the DBD::CSV module. See the DBD::CSV(3) manpage.

I do not want to give a formal grammar here, more an informal description: Read the statement definition in sql_yacc.y, if you need something precise.

The main lexical elements of the grammar are:

Integers

Reals

Syntax obvious

Strings

Surrounded by either single or double quotes; some characters need to be escaped with a backslash, in particular the backslash itself (\\), the NUL byte (\0), Line feeds (\n), Carriage return (\r), and the quotes (\' or \``).

Parameters

Parameters represent scalar values, like Integers, Reals and Strings do. However, their values are read inside Execute() and not inside Prepare(). Parameters are represented by question marks (?).

Identifiers

Identifiers are table or column names. Syntactically they consist of alphabetic characters, followed by an arbitrary number of alphanumeric characters. Identifiers like SELECT, INSERT, INTO, ORDER, BY, WHERE, ... are forbidden and reserved for other tokens.

What it offers is the following:

CREATE

This is the CREATE TABLE command:

    CREATE TABLE $table ( $col1 $type1, ..., $colN $typeN,
                          [ PRIMARY KEY ($col1, ... $colM) ] )

The column names are $col1, ... $colN. The column types can be INTEGER, CHAR(n), VARCHAR(n), REAL or BLOB. These types are currently completely ignored. So is the (optional) PRIMARY KEY clause.

DROP

Very simple:

    DROP TABLE $table

INSERT

This can be

    INSERT INTO $table [ ( $col1, ..., $colN ) ]
        VALUES ( $val1, ... $valN )

DELETE

    DELETE FROM $table [ WHERE $where_clause ]

See SELECT below for a decsription of $where_clause

UPDATE

    UPDATE $table SET $col1 = $val1, ... $colN = $valN
        [ WHERE $where_clause ]

See SELECT below for a decsription of $where_clause

SELECT

    SELECT [DISTINCT] $col1, ... $colN FROM $table
        [ WHERE $where_clause ] [ ORDER BY $ocol1, ... $ocolM ]

The $where_clause is based on boolean expressions of the form $val1 $op $val2, with $op being one of '=', '<>', '>', '<', '>=', '<=', 'LIKE', 'CLIKE' or IS. You may use OR, AND and brackets to combine such boolean expressions or NOT to negate them.

INSTALLATION

Like most other Perl modules, you simply do a

    perl Makefile.PL
    make                (nmake or dmake, if you are using Win32)
    make test           (Let me know, if any tests fail)
    make install

Known problems are:

• Some flavours of SCO Unix don't seem to have alloca() or something similar. I recommend using gcc or egcs for compiling Perl and the SQL::Statement module: Both compilers have a builtin alloca().

  Another option could be to use external alloca.c, for example

    http://www.pu.informatik.th-darmstadt.de/FTP/pub/pu/alloca.c
    http://www.cs.purdue.edu/homes/young/src2www-example/alloca.c.html

  I did test neither of them and cannot give detailed instructions for including them into the SQL::Statement module. However, it should be sufficient to compile alloca.c with the same instructions than, for example, sql_yacc.c and finally repeat the linker command by inserting alloca.o after sql_yacc.o.

  Note that I cannot modify the sources to work without alloca(), as it is the bison parser that's using alloca() and I don't have the bison generated code in my hands.

  My thanks to Theo Petersen, <theo@acsp.com>, for pointing out this problem and the possible workarounds.

INTERNALS

Internally the module is splitted into three parts:

Perl-independent C part

This part, contained in the files sql_yacc.y, sql_data.h, sql_data.c and sql_op.c, is completely independent from Perl. It might well be used from within another script language, Tcl say, or from a true C application.

You probably ask, why Perl independence? Well, first of all, I think this is a valuable target in itself. But the main reason was the impossibility to use the Perl headers inside bison generated code. The Perl headers export almost the complete Yacc interface to XS, for whatever reason, thus redefining constants and structures created by your own bison code. :-(

Perl-dependent C part

This is contained in Statement.xs. The both C parts communicate via a C structure sql_stmt_t. In fact, an SQL::Statement object is nothing else than a pointer to such a structure. The XS calls columns(), Table(), where(), ... do nothing more than fetching data from this structure and converting it to Perl objects. See The sql_stmt_t structure below for details on the structure.

Perl part

Besides some stub functions for retrieving statement data, this is mainly the query processing with the exception of WHERE clause evaluation.

The sql_stmt_t structure

This structure is designed for optimal performance. A typical query will be parsed with only 4 or 5 malloc() calls; in particular no memory will be aquired for storing strings; only pointers into the query string are used.

The statement stores its tokens in the values array. The array elements are of type sql_val_t, a union, that can represent the most interesting tokens; for example integers and reals are stored in the data.i and data.d parts of the union, strings are stored in the data.str part, columns in the data.col part and so on. Arrays are allocated in chunks of 64 elements, thus a single malloc() will be usually sufficient for allocating the complete array. Some types use pointers into the values array: For example, operations are stored in an sql_op_t structure that containes elements arg1 and arg2 which are pointers into the value table, pointing to other operations or scalars. These pointers are stored as indices, so that the array can be extended using realloc().

The sql_stmt_t structure contains other arrays: columns, tables, rowvals, order, ... representing the data returned by the columns(), tables(), row_values() and order() methods. All of these contain pointers into the values array, again stored as integers.

Arrays are initialized with the _InitArray call in SQL_Statement_Prepare and deallocated with _DestroyArray in SQL_Statement_Destroy. Array elements are obtained by calling _AllocData, which returns an index. The number -1 is used for errors or as a NULL value.

The WHERE clause evaluation

A WHERE clause is evaluated by calling SQL_Statement_EvalWhere(). This function is in the Perl independent part, but it needs the possibility to retrieve data from the Perl part, for example column or parameter values. These values are retrieved via callbacks, stored in the sql_eval_t structure. The field stmt->evalData points to such a structure. Of course the calling method can extend the sql_eval_t structure (like eval_where in Statement.xs does) to include private data not used by SQL_Statement_EvalWhere.

Features

Different parsers are implemented via the sql_parser_t structure. This is mainly a set of yes/no flags. If you'd like to add features, do the following:

First of all, extend the sql_parser_t structure. If your feature is part of a certain statement, place it into the statements section, for example ``select.join''. Otherwise choose a section like ``misc'' or ``general''. (There's no particular for the section design, but structure never hurts.)

Second, add your feature to sql_yacc.y. If your feature needs to extend the lexer, do it like this:

    if (FEATURE(misc, myfeature) {
        /*  Scan your new symbols  */
        ...
    }

See the BOOL symbol as an example.

If you need to extend the parser, do it like this:

    my_new_rule:
        /*  NULL, old behaviour, doesn't use my feature  */
        | my_feature
            { YFEATURE(misc, myfeature); }
    ;

Thus all parsers not having FEATURE(misc, myfeature) set will produce a parse error here. Again, see the BOOL symbol for an example.

Third thing is to extend the builtin parsers. If they support your feature, add a 1, otherwise a 0. Currently there are two builtin parsers: The ansiParser in sql_yacc.y and the sqlEvalParser in Statement.xs.

Finally add support for your feature to the feature method in Statement.xs. That's it!

MULTITHREADING

The complete module code is reentrant. In particular the parser is created with %pure_parser. See bison(1) for details on reentrant parsers. That means, the module is ready for multithreading, as long as you don't share handles between threads. Read-only handles, for example parsers, can even be shared.

Statement handles cannot be shared among threads, at least not, if you don't grant serialized access. Per-thread handles are always safe.

AUTHOR AND COPYRIGHT

This module is Copyright (C) 1998 by

    Jochen Wiedmann
    Am Eisteich 9
    72555 Metzingen
    Germany

    Email: joe@ispsoft.de
    Phone: +49 7123 14887

All rights reserved.

You may distribute this module under the terms of either the GNU General Public License or the Artistic License, as specified in the Perl README file.

SEE ALSO

DBI(3), the DBD::CSV(3) manpage