Jason, just allow a setting at the TIB_Connection or TIB_SessionProps
components to change quickly this trimming issue, globally. Having different
behavior depending on the length is a source of future headaches and is
really nonsense IMO. Having different behavior for CHAR and VARCHAR is
controversial. Leave things as they have worked for the vast majority of
users until now but allow a really quick and global change of behavior. Per
field setting is too much if you want always the opposite of the default.
People that want or need to clutter 75% of the hard disk with 0x20 should be
allowed to proceed with minimal effort.
I can't imagine how a customer mine values the preservation of blanks at
the tail of an address or name field, for example. I'm surprised someone has
not requested yet to pad numeric fields with zeroes at the left... maybe
only because they could be confused with octal notation? Even in some
scientific applications I've done, the "nurturing" of trailing spaces was
not of paramount importance. But there's always a case different than the
own case. I have the feel that preservation of anything that for the casual
observer is gargage should be left to CHARACTER SET OCTETS, but anyway,
let's cut this discussion with a global setting and voila.
The point is that interactive business applications may benefit from
trimming but as you get data from a low level device and want to save it in
a field, you better keep exactly what you got or you spoil it completely.
Maybe this is a case for BLOB storage more than for varchars. I had to
fiddle with proprietary file formats when dealing with scientific
applications, not with high level database engines. Finally, I think that
there are legitimate uses of trimming and legitimate uses of fields exactly
as they are. As our remembered Rob used to say, "keep smiling". :-)
BTW, to add more wood to the fire, the rules for comparison in IB change
depending on whether the field is indexed or not when implicit conversions
happen, as Frank Ingermann may remember from my answer in Mers in January.
In this scenario, a blank at the tail could be the difference.

C.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Geoff Worboys [mailto:geoff@...]
> Sent: Jueves 22 de Marzo de 2001 20:10
>
> Jason,
>
> > Now that IBO allows centralized rules for domains I think it is
> > easy to make either make their settings. Assuming people use
> > domains, it is trivial to make a list of your domains and flag
> > them with the behaviors you want for them. Trimming is included
> > in that.
>
> I dont want to define every domain in my application just to get
> righttrimming applied. And it seems, from some of the other strong
> opinions expressed, that others will not want to define every domain
> just to prevent righttrimming.