I think there might be some confusion about the space trimming issue and the
insignificant character trimming that IBO does in the buffers for saving
memory. These are two totally separate issues.

No trimming rules of "meaningful data" in the mathematically correct sense
are carried out in IBO's buffers. This means that all CHAR columns take up
full memory in the buffers even if there are spaces in them. It is only at
presentation time that the spaces are suppressed.

As for VARCHARS. The same rule applies. If there are meaningful spaces
applied they are stored in the IBO buffers and it is only at presentation
time that they are suppressed. The insignificant characters which are
suppressed from the buffers are those that are beyond the length indication
of the varchar.

So, the data access portion of IBO truly respects the data in the pure
mathematical correctness sense. It is just during the presentation and
interaction that trimming rules are played out.

I hope this clarifies some important things...

David, how would you like an AsRawString property? This would be a way to
explicitly have the trimming rules ignored regardless of what the settings
are. Then this would become the divider between the "interactive"
application and the "non-interactive" application.

Regards,
Jason Wharton
CPS - Mesa AZ
http://www.ibobjects.com