At 02:43 PM 06-05-00 -0600, you wrote:

>This would make three types of strings in the database no? Char, varchar,
>blob-subtype. Why not rethink the thing. Just make a string type. Do we
>really need chars if we have varchars? do we really need varchars if we
>have long strings? Why not make a type called string which is like a
>varchar without an upper limit. Or maybe the upper limit is the length of
>the block. Let blobs be exactly that binary large objects best suited for
>word documents or mp3s.

That still doesn't solve the problem of storing text blobs (text files such
as HTML and XML, and rtf) if they must be handled as strings. How would
one surmount the problem of reserved characters? It could blow away the
huge market of customers who want to use InterBase (as I do) as a really
fast way to store static, formatted plain text.

Helen

http://www.interbase2000.org
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"Ask not what your free, open-source database can do for you,
but what you can do for your free, open-source database."
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