At 02:47 4/10/2008, you wrote:

>I have a table with a column named "start" (unfortunately). I've used
>it in 1.5 and 2.0.4.13130 in windows, but it fails in 2.1. Can't use
>it in selects or triggers.
>
>Is there any way to avoid renaming it? I've tried surrounding it with
>quotes: "start" but it makes no difference. I've reverted to 2.0 in
>the meantime.

It has to be defined with double quotes around it. Double-quoted identifiers are case-sensitive, so "start", "Start" and "START" are three distinct identifiers. Once you have a double-quoted identifier, it must always be referred to with the double quotes in all SQL - whether in server-based code like SPs, triggers and constraints or in client-based code.

If it's defined as "START" then the engine allows it to be referred to as though it were START without the quotes. This is **not a plus** if the word is a reserved word, since such references will cause exceptions anyway.

> I've reverted to 2.0 in the meantime.

And there, sadly, you will remain until you resolve this issue. Since you have to find and modify every occurrence of this reference everywhere, it makes more sense to rename it totally to an identifier that isn't likely to conflict with future keywords. In the past, InterBase and early Firebird developers were a bit loose about their choices of names for language elements. However, for a long time now, it has been standard practice in Firebird to use standard SQL names if they are available; and also to do parallel standard implementations of language features that are idosyncratic in Firebird.

There's an indexed list of standard SQL keywords here:
http://www.firebirdsql.org/doc/contrib/standardSQLkeywords.html

./heLen

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