Bewilderedly behold this SQL statement:
SELECT * FROM a.b.c;
Nobody can know the meaning of "a.b.c" without knowing the
terminology, the context, and the varying intents of various DBMS
implementors.
The terminology
It's pretty clear that a.b.c is a name, that is, a unique reference to an SQL object, which in this case is a table.
The name happens to be qualified -- it has three parts separated by periods. A generalist would say that each part is a container, with the first part referring to the outermost container a, which contains b, which contains c. Analogies would be: a directory with a subdirectory and a sub-subdirectory, or an element within a struct within a struct.
That is true but incomplete. Now we fight about what kind of
container each
identifier refers to, and what is the maximum number of levels.
What kind of container
The standard suggests that the levels …
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