Joe,

["Dave Odom" <Dave.Odom@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Joe,

I'm not going down the academic nit-picking road as it comes down to
interpretation of the "bible" and we will never come to resolution just
like in religion.  You want to quote chapter and verse about such things
as the "comprehensive data sub-language rule" (Oh, BTW, I studied all
those rules back in the mid-1980s's too when I made the same arguments
as you do to the rest of the relational world and therefore I know
academic religious banter is fruitless).   But, what matters is how Rule
5 and all the others has been accepted and adopted and understood in the
real world, in real world RDBMS.   In those worlds, SQL is the ONLY
language allow to talk to their RDBMS.  What I don't see on your part is
any understanding nor acknowledgment of how different the iSeries and
its implementation of a DB2 is from real world RDBMS' and how that might
effect the future of the brand.  You want to pick the nit.

You've completely miss the important points I've been trying to get
across.  What I'm trying to do here is make arguments that deal with how
the real world works and how the iSeries is "seen" from outside the
normal IT world and what that means to the future of the brand and
people's jobs therein.   

Perhaps when I get time, I'll pick the nits with you.  In the mean
time, I have to get some work done dealing with .ASP and the iSeries
DB2.      

Dave