At 08:08 PM 10/26/2001 +1000, Geoff Worboys wrote:

>To transfer normal text fields without problems I have to resort to
>BLR so that I can specify the character set id for each field
>(blr_text2 etc). The standard API mechanisms assume the connection
>character set leading to possible translation problems in various
>situations (particularly with character set NONE fields).

That seems vaguely unlikely since it would make a database with
multiple character sets unusable from SQL...

>Blobs...
>
>Is anyone able to tell me whether it always OK to simply read/write
>blobs without application of matching character set filters?

Yes.

>And having answered that... What about sub_type 0? IB/FB accepts the
>declaration of character set against sub_type 0, even though it is
>supposed to be unstructured.

Undefined structure - there are lots of type 0 blobs that contain text.
Again, the blob data is moved as bytes without translation so you should
be OK.

>Arrays...
>
>Looking through Restore.e there is reference to blr_text2 and other
>character set specific blr data types when writing array data. There
>does not seem to be any matching reference in Backup.e. At the moment
>I am presuming this must be provided to support differences in
>previous releases.

No, it reflects the general disregard for blobs. However, array data
will be transferred without regard to content - byte value for byte value.

Sorry not to have a better answer for text fields - perhaps someone else...

Regards,

Ann
www.ibphoenix.com
We have answers.