Actually, there is a way that a UDF can receive parameters "BY DESCRIPTOR".
It's yet
another of those GDML features that work, but don't have SQL syntax to
support them.

One of my other "unfinished" products is a package that includes an
Oracle-Like NVL()
function - making use of the BY DESCRIPTOR parameter passing.

Hey! Anyone want to finish this up for me? The basic package is done,
what's needed
is install scripts, test scripts, and documentation.

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Chamberlin [mailto:dchamberlin@...]
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 12:32 PM
To: IB-Architect@egroups.com
Subject: Re: [IB-Architect] What will make InterBase more attractive?


I agree with your basic approach to making IB more attractive.

I have often wanted to work on your item #1 (creating a library of UDF's
which provide similar functions to Oracle functions). One big impediment is
that a UDF cannot now tell if a field whose value is being passed into the
function is NULL. Nor can a UDF return a NULL state as a result. I would
like to see this changed so that both are provided in a future version of
IB. Perhaps a new parameter passing convention similar to VMS descriptors?



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