RE: [stellation-res] Decision on Oracle backend needed!

["Jonathan Gossage" <jgossage@xxxxxxxx>]

> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: stellation-res-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >[mailto:stellation-res-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Ringo De Smet
> >Sent: October 2, 2002 3:56 AM
> >To: stellation-res@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Subject: [stellation-res] Decision on Oracle backend needed!
> >
> >
> >Hello,
> >
> > --- Dave Shields <shields@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >> Exactly! This does indeed look like bug in Oracle, as what happens
> >> when the user supplies a file consisting of the empty string. I
> >> suspect this will need to be translated to NULL in Oracle, even
> >> though the comment is not missing.
> >
> >I have been digging in some Oracle archives (otn.oracle.com and
> >www.orafaq.com) and there are numerous complaints about an empty string
> >being transformed to NULL. As it seems, Oracle has always done this and
> >it is unclear if this will ever change. I'm not that of a database
> >expert, so I'm falling back on all you guys to come up with a decision.
> >
> >1) We discuss this and come up with a workaround. For the comments,
> >it's not that of a problem, but as was pointed out, this could have
> >impact on storing empty source lines.
> >2) We dump the Oracle backend, maybe temporarily, and focus on the
> >other work.
> >
> >You choose. If 1, I'll continue the support for the Oracle backend, but
> >in the other case, there are still a lot of other things I can
> >contribute to Stellation.
> >
> >Ringo

NULL values for empty comments and text lines are easy to recognize. When
you call the JDBC function "getString" on the item in the result set, a null
is returned. This is easy to recognize and turn into an empty string. This
means that we can leave the existing code that writes to the database alone.

For an empty string on Oracle we will get a null returned, an empty string
for any other database. Either way we can inrerpret this as an empty string.

Regards

Jonathan Gossage

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