On 11/24/2004 04:55 AM, Steinhauer, Frank (CAM) said:
...
What actually happens is that the default binding for DBD::Oracle is
SQL_VARCHAR. When Oracle OCI sees that type, it automatically strips
trailing spaces leaving '' if that's all there was. Then '' is interpreted
as a NULL by Oracle. Binding as SQL_CHAR prevents the space stripping. ...
See
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&threadm=E3A8A8F741B2D611ACA800508B
6F33D4381467%40chitmd03.nt.il.nbgfn.com&rnum=2&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dbind_param
%2Bspace%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26selm%3DE3A8A8F741B2D611ACA800508B6F33D4381467%2
540chitmd03.nt.il.nbgfn.com%26rnum%3D2
Why there is no hint about something important like that in the documentation of DBI and DBD-Oracle? I think that's a really important issue!!!
It's been a basic problem with Oracle since forever that it treats '' as NULL.
The automatic removal of trailing spaces is mentioned in `perldoc DBD::Oracle` or http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBD-Oracle/Oracle.pm. Search for ora_ph_type.
===== ora_ph_type
The default placeholder data type for the database session. The TYPE or "ora_type" attributes to "bind_param" in DBI and "bind_param_inout" in DBI override the data type for individual placeholders. The most frequent reason for using this attribute is to permit trailing spaces in values passed by placeholders.
=====
-- Mac :}) ** I usually forward private questions to the appropriate mail list. ** Ask Smarter: http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html Cthulhu in 2004. Don't settle for the lesser evil.
