We are trying to port a database from SQL Server to Firebird. The database
makes considerable use of GUIDs, but Firebird doesn't have a GUID data
type, as far as I know. Here is a snippet of the message my colleague sent
describing some of the problems we're running into:

The OleDbCommand method GetColValue needs to return the column data in a
format acceptable to the application. If we store GUIDs in CHAR columns,
and CHAR columns are also used for text data, then it will be difficult
for GetColValue to know whether to convert the column value to UTF-16 (as
required for text), or to simply copy the data unchanged into the client
application’s buffer (as required for GUIDs).

GetColValue does not allow the application to specify the type of the
returned value. All we have to go on, is the server datatype. If that is
the same for what should really be two distinct types (text and GUID),
then we run into difficulties.

Steve Miller
Language Software Development
SIL International


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