I hope that the subject line does not confuse you. I am writing a parser, but I do not want to parse
CREATE TABLE mydb.myschema.t1(f1 int).
I want to parse the grammar used by Books Online to describe SQL statements, so I need a grammar that describes the SQL grammar, and not a grammar for SQL. Such a grammar would look something like this:
<rule> ::= <rule_name> '::=' <expression>
<expression> :: <list> | <list> '|' <expression>
<list> :: <term> | <list> <term>
<term> ::= <literal> | <rule_name>
<rule_name> := '<' <alpha_sequence> '>'
/* plus rules for optional items, repeating items, etc. */
Using such a grammar, I could then parse something like:
<create_table_stmt> ::= CREATE TABLE [ database_name . [ schema_name ] . | schema_name . ] table_name [ AS FileTable ] ( { <column_definition> | <computed_column_definition> | <column_set_definition> | [ <table_constraint> ] [ ,...n ] } )
[ ON { partition_scheme_name ( partition_column_name ) | filegroup
| "default" } ]
[ { TEXTIMAGE_ON { filegroup | "default" } ]
[ FILESTREAM_ON { partition_scheme_name | filegroup
| "default" } ]
[ WITH ( <table_option> [ ,...n ] ) ]
[ ; ]Does such a grammar exist?