Jeff: This thread is about __MORE__ than just the data! Kevin eloquently pointed out that some of the "old ways" in the U2 space need to be abandoned for more modern thinking. A certain perspective has survived here for years and this has spilled over into a number of areas where the U2 products have lagged behind in development. This seems to be changing, both with IBM's commitment and with this space's more recent thinking. The current state of affairs in U2 is case-sensitivity. This construct manifests itself negatively in myriad ways; data storage, command execution, indexing, searching, code production, etc, etc, etc.
The current "work-arounds" only address one aspect or another of the problem; e.g. with an environment setting one can compile BASIC code in a case-insensitive mode (great - . What about the other negative aspects of case-sensitivity? There might be another "work-around" but the solution has not been engineered, and needs to be. Some may want to code in upper-case only. As far as I can see there's nothing wrong with this. But be reasonable; don't __FORCE__ me to do the same !! Most of this thread has addressed the inconvenience of forced-casing or the "it shouldn't bother anyone, get used to it" perspective. MV was designed to be a dynamic product; not constrained by the arbitrary constraints of other dbms products; which offers tremendous flexibility. But it's hard to describe the difficulties involved in manipulating strings at the application level for simple string searches. These difficulties become larger and larger with each technology one interfaces with (like the web). The solution is simple...give both U2 products the ability, at least to start with, to install as a case-insensitive product; granularity can be added. Bill -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jeff Schasny Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 7:25 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [U2] Upper Case Only Different subject all together. I don't think anyone would disagree that there is a need to store (some) data in upper/lower case. The ongoing discussion has been about program source code, the 'consumer' of which is the machine itself who really doesn't give a hoot one way or another. Oh, and just because its Friday and therefore I'm in a particularly jovial mood has anyone anyone considered during this crusade that no matter how you write your source code it compiles to psudocode that is ALL UPPER CASE!!! :) Laura Hirsh wrote: > I think that the upper/lower case issue -- albeit not a show stopper for > anyone - is "much worse than that". > > Besides the "internal" back-n-forth about programming in basic, and what > case should be "current", I think that a bigger issue revolves around data > presentation and converting to a "modern" display and "modern" usage. > > For example, reports, mailing labels, "Dear John" letters... I mean, as a > programmer, I can use MCU - that works great, MCL - not as useful, but, > still works as documented. MCT? It's embarrassing. Dr. Mark Jones, MD is > almost impossible to return. Mark Jones III - allows me to send a "state of > the art" letter addressed to "Mark Jones Iii". > > SEARCH is another of my pet peeves. It should be *smart enough* to figure > out, or at least provide an option to be case insensitive. Maybe it does, > and I'm not aware. But it just always seemed crazy. So, I search - string? > "MARK JONES" then "Mark Jones" then "Mark jones" then "mark jones". > > BTREES? Although some may disagree, Mark Jones and MARK JONES are the same > thing - at least in our business environment. > > I think that if we want to work in a world that doesn't shout at us all the > time, then we need to look beyond how to write a basic program > > That's my $.02 (hey, what happened to the "cent" character... it used to be > there... I know it was... oh, maybe that was on the typewriters that didn't > allow lower case) > > Laura ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/ ------- u2-users mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe please visit http://listserver.u2ug.org/
