RE: mixed case text

From: Amar Kumar Padhi <TS2017_at_emirates.com>
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2002 03:38:22 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.004D0288.20020914033822@fatcity.com>

RE: mixed case text

I agree too, but with one exception.
Our system was built in 7.3, no function based indexes then. We stored everything in upper case. We have lot of clients using the software and no one complains as such about the Upper cases. Though with function-based indexes coming in we might consider mixed cases for specific identified columns only.

There is some data that always needs to follow a particular case, like currency codes, AED, AUD, USD, INR etc. We prefer keeping such data in upper case only and prevent user from entering lower cases. Other information can be mixed case.

rgds
amar
http://amzone.netfirms.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Mercadante, Thomas F [mailto:NDATFM@labor.state.ny.us]
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 6:39 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Subject: RE: mixed case text

Steve,

I agree with what everyone said here. The data should be stored as the user
enters it. I regularly add additional columns to database table that will
take a name field, upper-case it and remove all punctuation for sorting
purposes. I do this with a database trigger, so applications do not have to
do the work.

I realized long ago that there are too many variations in names to try and
store it one way, and return it the way the user entered it. The classic
example I always use when explaining this to people is the last name
teRiele. Notice the lower case first initial. And don't even start talking
about the Mc's. You have McDonald, Mcdonald, MacDonald, Mc Donald, Mac
Donald, Macdonald - it's insane. You'd be creating a function for each and
every name you came across.

Realize that if your application is used for communicating with people,
especially if you are looking for donations or to do business with those
people, that punctuation and proper capitalization must be perfect.

Hope this helps.

Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, September 12, 2002 10:08 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Well said, Philip. I have always used mixed case for the actual data stored
in the database and have never encountered a problem, except the index issue
you mention, and as you say, function-based indexes cure this problem.
If you uppercase the data on storage and rely on initcap to replicate the
original capitalizaton scheme, I could see the users getting confused
because what they enter isn't always what they are returned. That could be
hard to explain to non-computer people.

Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams@lifetouch.com <mailto:dwilliams@lifetouch.com>

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 10:23 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Far be it from me to call you a dinosaur, but it is my personal opinion that
unless you have a strong business reason to the contrary, text should be
stored in the database in its "natural" form, i.e. mixed case where
appropriate. No function that I can even conceive of could handle the
variety of address forms/names/etc and output them in a "proper" form. Even
if you get it pretty close, there are going to be more than a few
exceptions. And there's no excuse not to allow mixed case in the database
now that you can use functional indexes. Once again this is just my
(possibly humble) opinion from my own personal experience.

-- Philip

----- Original Message -----
To: "Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L" <ORACLE-L@fatcity.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 9:38 PM

I just had a heated, well perhaps not heated, but certainly adversarial
discussion with my manager regarding mixed case text. My position...Keep it
out of the database. His position ...same case text looks amateurish when
output, and the database should readilly accomodate it. He almost seems to
think my objection is related to a shortcoming in Oracle..."I used to do
that in Clipper 12 years ago".

It is my opinion that if you want to output mixed case data you should use
functions to "beautify" text like names and addresses. My biggest objection
is that by allowing mixed case text in a table, you are setting up
developers (and me) to write queries that don't work. In order to get
proper results from a query you have to upper() every single query involving
the columns in question. To me this is far more annoying/complicated than
calling functions when writing the relatively few reports that require
"Proper" text.

So am I a dinosaur? Maybe it is because I am not writing the reports that
are complicated by my decision to upper() everything while loading.

Steve

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Author: Amar Kumar Padhi
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Received on Sat Sep 14 2002 - 06:38:22 CDT