Helen Borrie wrote:

> At 10:52 AM 9/10/2009, Geoff Worboys wrote:
>> [...] It is quite another to continually bludgeon that
>> person with the "fact" that they must be wrong;

[...]

> I'm at a loss to see who actually did that, though.

Given this is a virtual medium there was no "actual" bludgeon
involved. There were however several unhelpful repetitions of
the same question, with apparently no conception that the OP
could have a legitimate concern. The post that I interpretted
as particularly unfair was the one that I quoted. It seemed to
me that the OP had already attempted explanation (within the
constraints of their english skills).

> [...] I don't think it is surprising when a die-hard SQL
> engine expert such as Ann comes out with a bit of theory as
> an attempt to enrich perception of the problem. [...]

Except that the explanation turns out to be something of a red
herring. It led away from the real problem to postings not at
all helpful to the OP.

It was perhaps unfair to tackle Ann's post in this instance
because, at the time of her post, it was not completely clear
that the OP only wanted the first few rows of the result set.
Although the assumptions that led to such condescension as
"Everybody with even a vague recollection of a computer science
course knows" continues to concern me.

> I'd also make the point that trying to solve an end-user's
> problem by conducting an emotive discussion about how
> Firebird should change to behave more like Access or MySQL
> is intrusive and off-topic in this list.

I must have missed that one.

> If people are really serious about arguing a case for a
> feature enhancement or a re-implementation, they should
> do it in firebird-architect or firebird-devel.

Agreed.


--
Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing