Hi Steve,

> 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.

Can't you get the GUID as a string and convert it on the
client/application side?

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL
Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com