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I asked a question on SO and got a lot of negative feedback. Then, after asking some questions, I revised the OP, and got a little bit of positive feedback. After returning to the site a few hours later, my question was deleted.

I'm quite confused at why my question was deleted, and I also still don't know the answer. Could anyone shed any light on this?

Google's cache may stay around for another few hours.

This cache, unfortunately, was taken before my edits. Those appear to be irrevocably lost, with the constructive feedback and partial answers that I had received.

The OP: Where can I find a complete syntax diagram of the SQL standard?

Summary of the edits: After researching this for a couple days, I have found the technical documentation relatively impenetrable. What I am really looking for is a syntax diagram that includes every syntactic construct, enough to write a parser; however, I would prefer the documentation to not have a lot of verbose explanation.

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  • Also, if there is a way to retrieve my lost information, I would appreciate it. I thought it was pretty rude that the little bit of help I got was deleted.
    – kd8azz
    Dec 22, 2012 at 3:00

1 Answer 1

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Your question was closed because it's not considered a good, on-topic question for this site. There's a lot, a lot, of conversation covering closure over the years, but starting simple, quoting the FAQ:

We feel the best Stack Overflow questions have a bit of source code in them, but if your question generally covers …

  • a specific programming problem
  • a software algorithm
  • software tools commonly used by programmers
  • practical, answerable problems that are unique to the programming profession

… then you’re in the right place to ask your question!

You appear to be asking for a specification document. That doesn't fit well in any of those categories. Stack Overflow loves to help with programming question, but it doesn't love to be a documentation repository. Your later edit was better, it provided the justification and background ("I did my homework!"), but that's not enough to overcome the non-topicality.

Your question was deleted, in all likelihood, because the three users who voted to delete it didn't think the question was likely to be made suitably on-topic to be answered. It was deleted relatively quickly, but nowhere near record time.

You asked for a copy; here you go.

Where can I find a complete syntax diagram of the SQL standard?

I have searched Google with the phrase "syntax diagram of the SQL standard", which yields either specific implementations (e.g. Oracle, SQLLite) or simplifications. Being relatively new to whitepapers and such, I have found it quite difficult to navigate the technical documentation that I have found over the course of the last couple days of research.

I already understand SQL; what I am really looking for is an offical RFC, etc. that gives enough information to write a parser for the syntax, without pages of verbose explanation to sift through.

The link that Tomek posted is a good start, but it is still quite verbose, is out of date, and I don't understand why it is being hosted by Carnegie Mellon, as opposed to a standards body. The link is http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~shadow/sql/sql1992.txt

I didn't see anything else in the comments that might have been helpful - you already included Tomek's comment in your edit.

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  • Thank you very much for the explanation and for resurrecting my question.
    – kd8azz
    Dec 22, 2012 at 3:34

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