At 11:21 AM 3/29/00 -0500, you wrote:

>From: Jim Starkey <jas@...>
>
>The current SQL "order by" clause is
>
> { <expr> | <position> } [ ASC | DESC ]
>
>We could make it
>
> { <expr> | <position> } [ ASC | DESC ] [CASE SENSITIVE | CASE
> INSENSITIVE]

Here is how other databases do it.
Sybase. It an option when you create your database similar to choosing a
language collation order. By specifying a case insensitive collating
sequence at the outset no changes need to be made to any sql statements.
This options is database wide so you only have to specify it once.
Oracle: There is a session option that you can specify where you set column
collation and a order by collation sequence. The default is binary but you
can specify ASCII7 and language order to get case insensitive searches.
This option unfortunately requires you to build a specific kind of an index
on every column you want to search case insensitively on.

It seems to me since you can specify a language in the column you create in
IB you can simply create a language called "Case Insensive ascii" or "Case
insensitive US-English" or something. No messing with the parser no
breaking SQL compliance. It would be relatively easy to implement. Just
another language supported by Interbase.

I have been talking with David Schnepper (I believe he is on the list) and
he said he has worked on something like this himself but the product is not
yet ready for consumption. Too bad because I was ready to pay him for it.