While editing, building up, or cherry picking from SQL statements I can find myself interacting with one of four popular database tools. I have been resorting to single line commenting for DB2 and Informix. I have created macros in vim to make this slightly more efficient but I was wondering if I am working too hard.
C style comments are standard in SQL 2003 and SQL 2008 (but not in SQL 1999 or before). The following DBMS all support C style comments:
That is not every possible DBMS, but it is more or less every major SQL DBMS. (I'll willingly add notes about any other DBMS that does - or does not - support C style comments.)
The SQL 2003 standard documents comment notations thus:
<comment> ::= <simple comment> | <bracketed comment> <simple comment> ::= <simple comment introducer> [ <comment character> ... ] <newline> <simple comment introducer> ::= <minus sign> <minus sign> [ <minus sign> ... ] <bracketed comment> ::= <bracketed comment introducer> <bracketed comment contents> <bracketed comment terminator> <bracketed comment introducer> ::= <slash> <asterisk> <bracketed comment terminator> ::= <asterisk> <slash> <bracketed comment contents> ::= [ { <comment character> | <separator> }... ] <comment character> ::= <nonquote character> | <quote>
IBM Informix Dynamic Server (IDS or Informix) supports C style comments. It also supports '{ ... }
' as potentially multi-line comments, except in contexts where it means something else - that something else being a LIST or SET or MULTISET literal. (You might find that DB-Access gets confused by C style comments; that is a separate issue.)
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