[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Oct 30, 2003, at 7:32 AM, Jason House wrote:

> I have thought about SQL dumps in the past...  I think that a good 
> starting point might be to try to consider how to dump a particular 
> protocol to a database (via one or more linked tables).

By "dump a protocol" do you mean "dump every field for that protocol"?

I suspect people might want to selectively dump particular fields.

They might also want some row of the table to contain fields from more 
than one protocol; perhaps it's *fields* that should be dumped, not 
*protocols*, at least in some cases.  Dumping all the fields might also 
be useful.

>   As is true with everything, there is no easy way to mass process all 
> protocols...  The generation of usable SQL tables requires 
> customization by protocol.

Hopefully "customization" doesn't involve changing any dissectors.  I 
think it'd be ideal if SQL dumping could be done *without* protocol 
changes, so that dissector writers don't have to anticipate what people 
might want to put into databases.