Re: case sensitivity

From: Shachar Shemesh <psql(at)shemesh(dot)biz>
To: Stephan Szabo <sszabo(at)megazone23(dot)bigpanda(dot)com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, pgsql-bugs(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: case sensitivity
Date: 2003-07-08 20:50:49
Message-ID: 3F0B2EA9.1020804@shemesh.biz
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Stephan Szabo wrote:

>On Sun, 6 Jul 2003, Shachar Shemesh wrote:
>
>
>
>>Tom Lane wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>See also the example and footnote at the end of section 1.1.1 of our
>>>documentation:
>>>http://www.postgresql.org/docs/view.php?version=7.3&idoc=0&file=sql-syntax.html#SQL-SYNTAX-IDENTIFIERS
>>>(not sure why the link to the footnote doesn't work in that version, but
>>>the footnote is at the bottom of the page).
>>>
>>>There has been some talk of providing an alternate mode in which
>>>unquoted identifiers are folded per spec, but this seems likely to
>>>break enough code that no one has really wanted to do it. My guess
>>>is that we will remain intentionally non compliant on this point
>>>forever.
>>>
>>>
>>Just so we are clear what's at stake here.
>>
>>I am trying to perform a migration to PG-SQL for some company. They
>>already support access, MS-SQL and Oracle, and want to support PG-SQL as
>>well. The problem is that the application is MFC, and CRowSet opens the
>>table double-quoting identifiers. The application itself does not. All
>>databases carry all identifiers in allcaps. As some of the ODBC code is
>>
>>
>
>Do you mean that the names are always allcaps like FOO? That would
>certainly show the incompatibility case, yeah.
>
That's how the app doesn't care whether its queries are quoted or not.

>>outside the specific application's control, I cannot tell them to "quote
>>or unquote all statements". This may drop the whole project, which would
>>be a real shame.
>>
>>Documenting this incompatibility is fine as far as it goes, but it does
>>not cover the migration very well.
>>
>>Also something to ponder is this. When I run psql on Debian Sid, and I do:
>>create table "Test" ();
>>select * from table;
>>
>>
>
>Do you mean Test here?
>
Yes, I did. Sorry.

> I'd wonder if you had a test table already defined,
>I can't reproduce on my 7.3.x box under redhat.
>
>
Neither can I, now. I guess it was something basic I missed when filing
the report. Please ignore.

>>The query runs fine! It seems that PG-SQL 7.3.3. on Linux (at least the
>>Debian version) treats unquoted as case independant. Am I missing
>>something? Why can't I set a "compatibility" flag for the DB?
>>
>>
>
>As Tom said, noone's wanted to go through and find all the things that
>giving an uppercase folding option would break. For example, fairly
>quickly after simply making the case folding go the other way for
>identifiers, initdb breaks. It'd probably require someone who had the
>time and interest in changing it and fixing all the breakage and probably
>some work from then on making sure that it stays working.
>
>
I'm willing to give it a go, but I'm going to need a few pointers. I
have never done anything with the psql source, and I will need to some
help in navigating.

Can you please point me to the place where the case comparison is being
performed?

Shachar

--
Shachar Shemesh
Open Source integration consultant
Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/

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