Adam,

> > I am new to Firebird, and I am trying to port a database from SQL
> > Server to Firebird. The SQL Server database has field names as long

as

> > 37 characters. RDB$FIELDS.RDB$FIELD_NAME has 31 characters, so I am
> > getting an error about string truncation.
> >
> > The simplest solution would be changing the length of the column,

but

> > what are the dangers of that?
>
> Unfortunately, that is not going to work. I agree it is an annoying
> limitation, but not too many others seem to think so.

I don't know where you got that impression... This is a limitation
which affects many people.

The fact that the issue has not been addressed, yet, is more a
reflection of the poor state of the original engine code, which made any
attempt to change the size equivalent to cutting your own wrists.

This is also why the engine doesn't support page sizes > than 16KB...
the code was not well structured such that the each time a routine
needed to define a variable for page size it did it locally using what
ever datatype the programmer thought best to use (my favorite is
Signed-SmallInt, since we all know that you can have a page size of
-1024 bytes).

{Useless you have actually reviewed the code; you would be hard-pressed
to really understand}

Much of the last 3-5 years has been spent in cleaning up the code and
attacking the really significant performance, reliability and SQL
compliance issues. Not everything can be fixed at once.


Sean