SQL Dialects
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Starting with version 6, InterBase is closer to the ISO/IEC 9075:1992 standard than previous versions in several ways. Some of those ways are incompatible with earlier implementations of SQL. In the current InterBase, each client and database has a SQL dialect: an indicator that instructs an InterBase server how to interpret transition features: those features whose meanings have changed between InterBase versions. See the Migration appendix in the Operations Guide for information about using dialects and transition features.
Dialects
- Dialect 1: transition features are interpreted as in InterBase version 5.6 and earlier.
- Dialect 2: diagnostic mode, where transition features are recognized and flagged with a warning.
- Dialect 3: transition features are interpreted as SQL-92 compliant.
Transition Features
- Double quote (“): changed from a synonym for the single quote (‘) to the delimiter for an object name.
- Large exact numerics: DECIMAL and NUMERIC data types with precision greater than 9 are stored at INT64 instead of DOUBLE PRECISION.
- DATE, TIME, and TIMESTAMP data types:
- DATE has changed from a 64-bit quantity containing both date and time information to a 32-bit quantity containing only date information.
- TIME is a 32-bit quantity containing only time information.
- TIMESTAMP is a 64-bit quantity containing both date and time information (same as DATE in InterBase 5 and older).