Compact?

[Ken Ray]

> In the same time, all BIG DBMS guys say:
>     NEVER DEPEND on field order !!!

BigDBMS guys don't have SQLSelectRecords()... :-)

When I have several places in my code that retrieves data with
SQLSelectRecords, I get back tab-delimited data, where I need to know
specifically what's in each column. For example, if my Entites table has
FirstName, MiddleName, and LastName fields, my code would say something
like "put the first tab-delimited item into a variable for FirstName,
put the second into a variable for MiddleName, and put the third into a
variable for LastName". If adding a new field makes it FirstName,
MiddleName, InsertedField, LastName, I have to change all the places in
my code that says "the third tab-delimited item is LastName" (since it
*isn't* anymore).

Right now I'm adding dummy fields to fill the slots, then adding the
"new" field, and then deleting the dummy fields.

And I can't use XML export for several reasons (the least of which being
that it takes several minutes for a large-ish datababase like I have),
but the other is that it chokes on import with special characters that
are in fields in the database, and that makes it even harder to use for
things like this.

Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/