RE: Constraint comparing blanks.

The moment I sent this I realized I'd been caught in the trap of confusion
wrought by too much DDS work lately. Of course you meant DDL, as you said.
Sorry. But I stand behind the rest of my message, and would very much like
to see more detail about that failure. Maybe a
SELECT NAME FROM TABLE WHERE NAME = ' '
or some such. Or to prove this to yourself:
SELECT NAME, COUNT(*)
FROM TABLE
WHERE NAME = ' '
GROUP BY NAME

When you are declare DDL for an SQL defined table we use a lot of

stuff

like
this

NAME <> ' ';

You do this in DDL? Can you give an example DDL statement where you do
this? (Maybe CREATE VIEW?)

Anyway, you have it right. NAME <> ' ' will always and forever expand
the shorter field with blanks until the lengths match, and will then
compare. One blank is and has always been equal to n blanks in SQL
unless something's broken.


create table ab (nam char(150))
Table AB in DLOVELADY1 created but could not be journaled.
insert into ab values(' THOMAS ')
1 rows inserted in AB in DLOVELADY1.
insert into ab values(' ')
1 rows inserted in AB in DLOVELADY1.
select count(*) from ab where nam <> ' '
COUNT ( * )
1
SELECT statement run complete.
select count(*) from ab where nam = ' '
COUNT ( * )
1
SELECT statement run complete.

Can you provide more detail on how this failed for you, please?

Dennis Lovelady
http://www.linkedin.com/in/dennislovelady
--
"Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie!' till you can find a rock."
-- Wynn Catlin