Re: Selecting a constant question

Larry McGhaw wrote:

>I'm really frustrated by this process I'm not trying to attack anyone
>here. I'm just surprised that no one will even entertain the idea that
>this is an issue that needs to be addressed.
>
>Instead nearly all of the responses have been attacking the applications
>that rely on the metadata.
>
>
Having been following this debate, I think what people have really been
attacking is the idea that the metadata for:

SELECT '1' AS varchar_column;

should be different from the metadata for:

SELECT varchar_column FROM really_big_table;

or for:

SELECT varchar_column FROM really_small_table;

Or at least that's what I've taken away from the dicussion- it's not so
much that the metadata shouldn't be relied on, it's that the metadata
may be more generic than theoretically necessary. And that the metadata
may not contain the length of a variable length field even when that
length is known.

Brian