> It kind of irritates me they would put a client-impacting
> feature in a server configuration file. In my opinion this
> should be an option on a per connection basis. If I wan't
> corrected or compatible with old way I should have a
> property at the connection level to control this.

Or there should at least be an efficient way to detect what
the server is using. In some C code I am working on what
we do is prepare the following statement:

SELECT R.RDB$RELATION_NAME,
(SELECT RDB$FIELD_NAME FROM RDB$RELATION_FIELDS F
WHERE F.RDB$RELATION_NAME=R.RDB$RELATION_NAME AND
F.RDB$FIELD_POSITION=?) AS TESTFIELD
FROM RDB$RELATIONS R
WHERE R.RDB$RELATION_NAME=?

and test the sqltype of the first parameter. If it is
SMALLINT then the server is using new style ordering, if
it is TEXT then it is using old style ordering.

Not very elegant or efficient (although it only has to be
done once per session), but we needed to know.

--
Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing