[Info-vax] SQLite port for OpenVMS (Re: Is there currently a functioning link for hobbyist licenses?)

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2015-03-13 18:32:15 +0000, David Froble said:

> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> 
>> Hmmm....  Hey Dave, what about an SQLite Pre-compiler for VMS BASIC? :-)
> 
> To be honest, I don't understand what a pre-compiler does.

A precompiler makes programming with embedded SQL code somewhat easier. 
 The precompiler accepts and processes both the base language code and 
the SQL-related language extensions, and uses that to create both 
processed source code for the target language compiler — variously with 
the extensions commented out, to keep the compiler happy — that is then 
compiled by the standard compiler, and the preprocessor variously also 
generates some custom object code that gets included in the executable.

Why?  When working with a program that uses SQL to access a database, 
you will want to use language variables for certain details of your SQL 
queries — using a language-local variable as an index or a search key 
for an SQL query, or as the destination for the count the number of 
records returned by an SQL query — and it is the precompiler takes care 
of bridging the contents of the variables with the SQL queries.

The precompiler might also process some aspects of the embedded 
database query — such as parsing the SQL query into its intermediate or 
internal format — so that the database software doesn't have to process 
those aspects at run time, and potentially processing those each time 
the database operation is involved.


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