Hi Claudio,

> Are you writing about the "ib_udf" library? When I asked for it several
> months ago, Brett Bandy (now gone) answered that it wasn't released. I would
> like to read Chris Jewell's opinions.

Fair enough, I have most of the UDF's re-written anyways, (please review
the udf source I released on the main interbase group in the 'maximum'
thread- If you like my coding style, I would be willing to release the
rest).

> > 3.) Is there a reason why the common udf's (or a subset of them) can not
> > become part of the new version?
>
> Is there a reason more headaches should be introduced? <g> Now, seriously
> speaking: you know very well that UDFs currently lack context: they don't
> know anything about character sets, for example. This is a huge
> disadvantage. Remember that several people use IB on other charsets than
> plain ASCII.

That is one of the reasons I was hoping to get them as part of the
engine. I was hoping that we could first come up with what sql
functions can be done using a simple udf, and what functions are better
done with blr macros. If we decide upon exactly what functions are
needed, then some of us could attack the problem.
Most of us are not hard core database programers, but, if we are told to
come up with function X to do job Y then we can handle it.
That should include internationalization of some internal functions.

best regards

Dalton