Firebird has what could be called "approximate" indexes. The fact
that a value appears in an index doesn't guarantee that the value is a
legitimate part of a result set. The normal case where a value appears
in the index but not in the result set is that the value is associated
with a record version that's not appropriate in the current transaction.


But there are cases where the value in the index is only approximately
right. Most numeric values are converted to double precision floating
point for indexing. This allows a the scale - or length - of the field
to change without invalidating the index. It does, however create a few
cases where the index key is only approximately the same value as the
value in the record. Since the index handling code is already set up to
check the actual value presented against the actual value in the record
version being retrieved, these mismatches are recognized.

We may be able to do the same thing with long strings. Firebird 2
doesn't need to limit the index key at all, just truncate it at the
maximum length that can be supported for the current page size, after
the key is built, but before prefix compression.


Regards,


Ann