Nando,

> M> How do your users KNOW they defined something in the wrong way.
>
> the database transforms input data in many other cases: CHAR values
> get padded, literal numbers passed as strings are converted to
> numbers, functions like CURRENT_TIMESTAMP are evaluated/expanded,
> DEFAULTs are applied, BEFORE INSERT and BEFORE UPDATE triggers may
> change input values, and so on. I guess you could call it
> normalization. To me, it's pretty straightforward and obvious that
> long strings are silently truncated if they don't fit, and I don't

It's not the database that's doing this. It's IBO.

IMO, you're defining a character column of a certain length because
you want your data to have a maximum length. Next, you ignore errors
(or actually, IBO does). Does this sound sensible?

Firebird or InterBase will raise exceptions when you're trying to put
in data that doesn't fit. Period.

Silently ignoring the data is one of the great MySQL "gotcha's" :-D

> remember having to worry about it in any other component set, but
> since I've been using almosts exclusively InstantObjects lately, and
> there are only strings there, my memory may fail.
>
> To account for this, even as an option, will make IBO slower. How much
> - that depends on how smart Jason makes it - but it's not going to be
> free.

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL, Oracle & MS SQL
Server
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