[snip]

> However it allows people to proceed in an improper manner in my opinion.
> I do not see a reason an empty blob should not be null. I see it as
> making a mess of the data in the db.

You're absolutely right. When I looked at the problem from another angle I realised that my application wouldn't cope in anycase, i.e. queries that find blobs that are null won't find these records. I don't know how the data got into this state, but it is easily cleaned up with statements like:

update bad_table set blob_field=null where blob_field='';

William, I agree this is not a problem for the JayBird developers and that instead the data should be cleaned up.

Roman, I did try to put a test case together but couldn't get it to go wrong !. I'm more than happy to do any testing if anyone wants me to, but I'm guessing that won't be needed.

Thanks to all for your help,

Simon.


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Simon.Harper@...
Applications Development Manager
Warwick Business School