Re: Interesting 8i "mixed case" object name...

From: GWood <sorry_at_nothere.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Apr 2005 22:27:25 GMT
Message-ID: <hBf9e.14$jt6.112@news-west.eli.net>

Thanks, Sybrand

I have been perusing the documentation. As a developer (not a DBA) my search is from curiosity. When I asked our DBA staff how a lowercase table name could appear in the all_tables view, the answer was "it's impossible, Oracle is case-insensitive". Seeing as though I had just spent hours tracking down a problem related to a lowercase table name, I found that a little terse.

Another interesting slant is that the Oracle documentation clearly states that "names cannot contain quotation marks". However, you can create a table using CREATE TABLE XXX."'my_table'". The entire 'my_table' will show in the all_tables view, complete with quotation marks. Seems to be contrary to the docs?

Schema Object Naming Rules
The following rules apply when naming schema objects: 1. Names must be from 1 to 30 bytes long with these exceptions:

   Names of databases are limited to 8 bytes.    Names of database links can be as long as 128 bytes.

2. Names cannot contain quotation marks.
3. Names are not case sensitive.
4. A name must begin with an alphabetic character from your database

character
set unless surrounded by double quotation marks. 5. Names can contain only alphanumeric characters from your database character
set and the underscore (_), dollar sign ($), and pound sign (#). Oracle strongly
discourages you from using $ and #. Names of database links can also contain periods (.) and "at" signs (@).

"Sybrand Bakker" <postbus_at_sybrandb.demon.nl> wrote in message news:1vva61tod66l1rj1is48b8nv09aqtnlnke_at_4ax.com...
> On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 21:35:23 GMT, "GWood" <sorry_at_nothere.com> wrote:
>
> >We've fixed the problem, but are curious on how/why Oracle allows this.
> >Ideas?
>
> Lowercase characters, the - and the space are considered special
> characters. Special characters need to be embedded in double quotes.
> This applies to any identifier.
> Obviously this is documented, either in the Reference manual or in the
> Sql reference manual. Please refer to these manuals.
>
>
>
> --
> Sybrand Bakker, Senior Oracle DBA
Received on Tue Apr 19 2005 - 17:27:25 CDT