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RSQL, a Microsoft SQL clone

Data Stacker

Article from ADMIN 45/2018

By Frank Hofmann , By Gerold Rupprecht , By and Mandy Neumeyer

The open source relational database RSQL aims to completely replace slimmed-down instances of Microsoft SQL Server.

Database systems (DBSs) have existed for more than 60 years. Such software stores electronic data in a structured and permanent manner, usually in the form of tables with data records of a fixed size. The second task of a DBS, handled by the database management system (DBMS), is to retrieve this data efficiently and bring it to light as required. The DBMS organizes the storage of data within the DBS and checks all read and write accesses to the individual databases, taking into account the authorizations assigned to the various database users.

The data is accessed with the use of a query language, such as a structured query language (SQL), extended structured query language (XSQL), or XML query language (XQuery). The central DBMS discussed in this article and known as RSQL [1] implements a subset of Transact-SQL (T-SQL) [2], which is a proprietary extension of the SQL standard by Microsoft and Sybase. This SQL dialect is characterized by procedural programming, local variables, error handling, string processing, and mathematical operations [3].

Communication between the DBS and the outside world can be established using either a database console in a terminal, intermediary software in the form of an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) or Java Database Connectivity (JDBC) driver, or a suitable library. On Linux systems, the libdbi [4] framework is usually used as the corresponding library. RSQL provides a C# driver, which you can use as a C# developer to communicate directly with the DBS [5]. The driver is functionally identical to the C# SQL Server driver from Microsoft, so it is sufficient to replace