At 06:39 PM 29-01-02 +0100, you wrote:

>Should I conclude that IB lacks a lot of handy functions that all other
>RDBMS have ?

Definitely. It's a deliberate design strategy - ship with only essential functions, in order to keep the database engine's footprint small. Even now, it is only about 1.7 Mb.

>Now that I am at it, the list of functions contained in the LangRef looks
>rather slim...

True - especially if you compare it with the function reference manuals that come with Oracle and MSSQL Server.

A range of additional functions can be added at database level, as required, by declaring UDFs to your database. IB/FB ship with ib_udf.dll. This UDF is documented in LangRef.pdf. Firebird adds FBUDF.dll (only for Windows currently and won't work with IB 5.x); and there are a number of good UDF libs available either free or at low cost - check out the UDFs section of the Contributed Downloads page at www.ibphoenix.com. You can also write your own UDFs.

The date function UDFs you want are in FreeUDFLib.dll, which you can download from www.cvalde.com.

regards,
Helen


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