[BioSQL-l] Question about VARCHAR BINARY

[Hilmar Lapp]

Hi Florian,

sorry this fell through the cracks, too much traveling. VARCHAR BINARY  
in MySQL means that the column is a VARCHAR type but values (and  
searches against them) are treated case-sensitive.

Since treating VARCHAR values case sensitive is standard in SQL  
everywhere else and presumably also in DB2, you should map it to a  
simple VARCHAR type.

Where did you find that MySQL's VARCHAR BINARY needs to be VARBINARY  
in DB2?

	-hilmar

On Jun 4, 2009, at 9:52 AM, Florian Mittag wrote:

> 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
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> BioSQL-l at lists.open-bio.org
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-- 
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: Hilmar Lapp  -:-  Durham, NC  -:-  hlapp at gmx dot net :
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