David,

> With regard to UDF libraries, has anyone thought about whether it
> would make sense to distribute a wider range of UDFs with the standard
> Firebird distribution (or even a "premium" distribution)? I thought
> that, as long as the UDFs are portable among the platforms upon which
> Firebird runs, it would be very helpful if a couple of the most useful
> UDF libraries (or just the most universally useful functions from
> those libraries) were brought together for inclusion with Firebird.

I would much prefer that scope of the built-in functions would be
significantly expanded so that UDF would be reserved for "unique" needs
not the "commonly needed" items. Thus, the portability of the functions
would be guaranteed for all ports.

Charlie Caro presented a paper at the last BorConf, but I didn't like
the approach he proposed (essentially the same one used to implement the
EXTRACT function). Aside from requiring each function become a new
reserved word, the steps necessary to implement a new function are less
than 'straightforward'. But this is a discussion for the Firebird-Devel
list.


Sean