On Sat, 13 May 2006 16:21:04 -0500, "James Gilliland" <neclimdul@gmail.com> wrote :

That's the problem, standards aren't kept by all databases and features are added. this leaves us implementing a subset of features or using the abstration layer to implement differing features on different databases. I quick example is auto increment in mysql and sequence in pgsql.

I didn't say it was perfect, but only it is a good base to start learning on. Most of the extensions are trivial (and some are actually useful) and most software vendors (including the large ones) know that things like built-in sequence number generators are best not used. Drupal is just repeating a lesson already learned by many others. (Don't get me started on foreign keys, constraints and cascading deletes either...) Pat