Re: SQL searching in a field that has a series of codes

Dan Kimmel wrote:

If you're going to use SQL, why would you want to shove the whole thing
into a single field?

Because SQL searchability (and efficiency thereof) is actually a relatively minor consideration in this case. And SQL (generated, not hand-coded, and processed through the CLI!) is used because it's difficult to predict what an end-user is going to want to look for, at any given time. So long as efficiency is not so low as to be impractical, I'm more concerned with overloading the SQL generator (or even giving the CLI more than it can handle) than I am with actual search efficiency.

I forget: can you even use UDFs with the CLI, and V4R4 as the minimum platform?

And generating a bunch of substring comparisons on the fly, on a field that might be big enough to hold 200 5-digit codes (an extreme possibility, but a possibility) does not sound like fun.

If it were up to me, I'd represent the multi-selectable drop-down as a bitmap, and disallow searching entirely. Or I'd tell those asking for multi-selectable drop-down lists to go take a hike.

But it's not up to me.