Hi Oliver,

The only thing that I would want to be able to do is extract any element
out of the binary array and manipulate it.
That includes casting it to a ASCII equivalent, or XOR'ing it with
another binary element.
Left and Right Shift Mathmatics as well. (although multiplying or
dividing it by 2 works just as well)
The thing here is, anything we do should be able to be done in
SP/Trigger code.
If we use the OCTET subtype, we are limiting our manipulation to client
side unless we also create a series of UDF's to handle the manipulation.

I do not mind the idea of making the UDF's as long as we all agree to
the format and what exactly needs to be done.

best regards

Dalton



Olivier Mascia wrote:

>
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>
> > And good idea of using subtypes for VARCHAR and CHAR fields that
> > can indicate short binary data. This enables new data type aliases:
> > VARBINARY(n) and BINARY(n) (someone asked about octet(4) for ip
> > adresses?).
> > Unfortunately, this can introduce incompatibility when software
> > that assumes every VAR/CHAR is textual tries to convert it to text.
>
> CHAR(4) CHARACTER SET OCTETS
>
> Works perfectly well for storing/retrieving and moving around (in
> local variables in triggers and stored procedures) things like IP
> addresses in network format.
>
> I also routinely use CHAR(8) CHARACTER SET OCTETS for temporary
> storage (local variables) of RDB$DB_KEYs.
>
> Is there really a need to invent a BINARY ?
> Is it part of any SQL standard ?
>
> Are there reasons why the above should not work ?
>
> - --
>
> Olivier Mascia, om@..., Senior Software Engineer
> T.I.P. Group S.A., www.tipgroup.com, Director
>
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