I'm converting a database from Paradox to Firebird. This has been going
fairly well: I've got a working database converter and am starting to debug
the application using Firebird instead of BDE.

However, now I'm getting to parts of the app which make heavy use of
indexes. When any of the fields in an index require quoting, then I
run into problems. For example, given this table:

CREATE TABLE ARINV (
"Acc ID" INTEGER NOT NULL,
"Invoice #" VARCHAR(25) NOT NULL,
"Date" DATE NOT NULL,
"Sub Total" NUMERIC,
"Tax" NUMERIC,
"Freight" NUMERIC,
"Total" NUMERIC,

... and some more fields, clipped for brevity

CONSTRAINT PK_ARINV PRIMARY KEY ("Acc ID", "Invoice #", "Date")
);

This line of code: tblInvoice.FindNearest( [ID, nil, nil] );
throws an exception that says this: Cannot access index field 'ARINV."Acc
ID" '
from within TIBODataset.SetKeyFields[1].

I have worked around this by using Locate instead of FindNearest, but that
just
means that later in the process, I get a different error: "Field 'Acc ID' is
not
indexed and cannot be modified."

The FindNearest issue seemed to be fixed by changing the field names to
things that didn't require quoting, e.g., ACCID, INVOICE_NO, ARINVDATE.

The problem with this approach is that out of some 1200+ fields, I'm
guessing
that the names of at least 600 to 700 include spaces or other objectionable
characters (or are just downright reserved words, like Date and Type). The
amount of work involved in changing all of these fields is enormous, and
greplace,
while useful, will almost certainly not be appropriate for some of these
changes
since it may not know enough about the context of the string. The app would
benefit thereby, but I'd like to do this at some point, but I'd guess it'd
take another
month, which I can't afford just now.

On the other hand, if TIBODataset's never really going to support this, then
I'll have
to decide what to do next (fix the real problem or see if another
DB/Framework combo
will work better for me).

So here are my questions:

- Are there known issues in TIBODataset with indexes that involve quoted
fields?
- Will these be fixed?
- Will they be fixed soon?

I'm more than willing to help diagnose and fix this if someone can give me a
little
direction on where to look. I did try some stuff, with limited success [1].

Michael D. Spence
Mockingbird Data Systems, Inc.


[1] I looked at the source for TIBODataset.SetKeyFields, and ISTM that the
first
FindField call in GetIndex would always fail, because the field name in
tmpStr
would always be the fully qualified field name (e.g., 'ARINV."Acc ID" '),
whereas
the FieldName members are always unqualified and without quoting (e.g., 'Acc
ID').
I added some code to strip the table name and any quotes, and that seemed to

work, but then I got the other error ("Field 'Acc ID' is not indexed and
cannot be
modified.") so I removed the changes and worked around calling FindNearest
by
using Locate instead.

If there isn't a deeper underlying problem and someone could tell me what
"not Indexed and cannot be modified" really means here, I could look
further.



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