> If you want the firebird users base to grow, you need to
> adhere standards.

> So, there must be a hard reason to violate it or it is a bug.

No... There must be a hard reason to violate it or it is not
standards compliant.

There is a significant difference between a "bug" and standard
compliance (and what level of compliance etc).

As for a "hard reason", how about: Its the only way that makes
sense. :-)

I dont know why the current implementation was done this way,
but being the logical way to do integrity checking seems to
be a likely explanation.

To test integrity after you have made a change (ie. lets do it
and see what breaks) seems like an unreasonable way to perform
integrity checks - something you resort to only as a last
resort.

As to why the standard should say to do it after the change.
I do not know. I cannot see any useful reason to do it this
way, I can only assume that a committee has been involved. ;-)

--
Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing