[BioSQL-l] Question about VARCHAR BINARY

[Florian Mittag]

Hi everyone!

I'm new to BioSQL and just started using it, when I noticed that some tables 
contain columns with type VARCHAR BINARY, e.g. the column "name" in the 
table "biodatabase". May I ask, what is the reason behind this?

We switched to a DB2 database for some performance issues and set up the 
BioSQL schema, and MySQL's VARCHAR BINARY corresponds with DB2's VARBINARY, 
which is somewhat annoying because the content of those columns is displayed 
hexadecimal on command line interface and the visualizer we are using just 
shows "BINARY, x bytes".

Since I'm new BioSQL I just might miss an important point, but it seems to me 
that there is no reason to have those columns defined as BINARY, because only 
text is stored in them.

Could you please enlighten me? ;-)


Regards,
  Florian