Hi Jonathan,

> Another example is that of a union. Since unions require that the
> columns from each select statement be of exactly the same type, an error
> message is issued if ever this is not so. This very helpful error
> message is "Data type unknown"! This tells us practically nothing. It
> just means that some column is wrong somewhere. It would be nice to know
> which one. (Also, as a side note, I think in cases when it's possible,
> it would also be nice if there was some implicit casting. For example,
> if there are two varchars of different sizes, why not take the larger of
> the two, and implicitly cast the other one to the right type. This would
> get rid of a lot of the hassle of using unions. The same is true for
> numerics. However, there obviously shouldn't be any implicit casting
> between varchars and numerics and dates, etc.)

This is implemented in FB2.0 and follow the same rules as COALESCE. So
that's already 1 search less, but i agree with you that we should try to add
more information to the error messages.

Regards,
Arno Brinkman
ABVisie

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