Hi,

At February 25, 2005, 15:31, Thomas Miller wrote:

> The thing that scares me is that you should never use a column for two
> completely
> different things.

I agree.

> I would suggest

> FIELD_DATA_TYPE // English representation like VARCHAR or CLOB

This would be welcomed. Especially if CLOB is the same as BLOB
SUBTYPE TEXT. This could make sure that the metadata extraction shows
the same as what you initially specified.

> FIELD_INTERNAL_DATA_TYPE // Current numbering system

It's the same as RDB$FIELD_TYPE
And, don't forget RDB$FIELD_SUB_TYPE

> FIELD_CHARACTER_SET // or whatever you would call it

Same as RDB$CHARACTER_SET_ID
There's also RDB$COLLATION_ID

> FIELD_BYTE_SIZE // size in bytes the database needs for internal storage.

Same as RDB$FIELD_LENGTH

> FIELD_LENGTH // For characters

Same as RDB$CHARACTER_LENGTH

> FIELD_PRECISION // For number

Same as RDB$FIELD_PRECISION

> FIELD_SCALE // For numbers

Same as RDB$FIELD_SCALE

So essentially, most of the different fields that you suggest are
already there.

--
Best regards,
Daniel Rail
Senior System Engineer
ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.filopto.com)