Olivier,

> > E.g. if you need to display data in tabular form, application needs
> > to find out
> > number of characters, not blindly use the "length" directly from data.
>
> I perfectly agree with you that finding the number of characters (not
> byte-length) is needed. But why would the engine return description
> of its output if it's to ask user to please run additional query
> against the metadata tables to "learn more"?

After prepare, the xsqlda structure contains
* datatype (CHAR)
* character set (UTF8)
* desired buffer length

IMO it is sufficient to get correct number of characters from fixed size/padded buffer.
(well, yes, I assume the application knows the id used by FB to describe UTF8)
But perhaps I am still missing something ? :)

Ivan