Compliant with Microsoft SQL

[pepijn-hockers]

Hi there,

I was investigating this package for possible usage within my service. However, I couldn't find a reference on Microsoft SQL server. Is the package compliant and usable for Microsoft SQL? MSSQL?

Kind regards,

Pepijn

[kyleconroy]

MSSQL support is planned but not implemented yet. Hopefully soon!

[tooolbox]

Yes, I did a search and can’t find anything. I guess the best option may be modifying an existing one such as the Vitess parser.

[tooolbox]

What am I saying? Probably better to find an existing library in another language and port it.

[tooolbox]

Since I saw you are using an ANTLR v4 based parser for SQLite, I found such a grammar for tsql. Not complete, but might be suitable as a starting point.

https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/tree/master/sql/tsql

[tooolbox]

There is also a pre-generated Go package for this grammar:

https://github.com/bramp/antlr4-grammars/tree/master/tsql

[tooolbox]

@kyleconroy in some spare time last year, I started building a native-go TSQL parser using Participle. I got it working with a large set of SELECT queries.

Obviously next on the agenda would be INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE. I'm wondering what other statements would need to be parseable for the package to be useful to sqlc.

[fautore]

hi, what's the status on the Microsoft SQL compliance/support?

[kyleconroy]

Still waiting for a MSSQL parser written in Go

[tooolbox]

I was working on this a while back, got this far but no farther.

[koalazub]

@tooolbox last merge was 7 years ago but it seems like the conversation was still going with the author. Did the conversation continue elsewhere?

[tooolbox]

No, it did not continue elsewhere. I suppose we were both busy and nothing further happened.

As of now I still don't have time to pursue that project further, but there is a parser for SELECT/UPDATE/INSERT/DELETE which passes a large number of test cases. Anyone is welcome to pick it up and take if further; if I need to shove an MIT license in there I will.

[EliSauder]

For the parser what is the hesitancy to use https://github.com/antlr/grammars-v4/tree/master/sql/tsql as mentioned by @tooolbox?

@kyleconroy

[tooolbox]

I personally did not have a lot of luck trying to use that generated antlr parser when I tried, years ago. Which is why I tried to write my own.

Looking at it now, there does appear to be the recent addition of: https://github.com/ha1tch/tsqlparser

[EliSauder]

Ah gotcha

[EliSauder]

@tooolbox are you familiar at all with https://github.com/microsoft/SqlScriptDOM and it's grammar files e.g. https://github.com/microsoft/SqlScriptDOM/blob/main/SqlScriptDom/Parser/TSql/TSql170.g

[tooolbox]

No, apologies, I am not.

As I said though, the one by ha1tch seems decent, no? All sqlc needs is the AST, from my understanding.

[EliSauder]

Yeah, it looks pretty decent

[kyleconroy]

ANTLR grammars produce really gross ASTs. Our SQLite parser currently uses it and I want to avoid it. I've started workon https://github.com/sqlc-dev/teesql which is a parser written in Go. Try it out!

[tooolbox]

Are there downsides to https://github.com/ha1tch/tsqlparser as mentioned previously, such that one would need to start from scratch?

[kyleconroy]

It's a newer project with little usage, so I'd rather control the parser if I need to make any changes for sqlc.