> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org [mailto:pgsql-general-
> owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Marc G. Fournier
> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 9:02 AM
> To: Richard_D_Levine@raytheon.com
> Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] [GENERAL] Oracle buys Innobase
>
> On Wed, 19 Oct 2005, Richard_D_Levine@raytheon.com wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org wrote on 10/19/2005 12:35:25 AM:
> >
> >> Christopher Kings-Lynne <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes:
> >>> Strangely a pgsql to oracle exporter is a good thing. It'd be a
great
> >>> feature of PostgreSQL. Imagine how many people would start on
> >>> PostgreSQL if they KNEW that one day they could easily move to
Oracle
> > if
> >>> they needed to. Risk management.
> >>
> >> Problem is: to offer such a thing with a straight face, we'd have
to
> >> confine ourselves to an Oracle-subset version of SQL. For
instance,
> >> lose the ability to distinguish empty-string from NULL.
> >
> > Yep. It is not just limited to empty strings; An all blank string,
no
> > matter the number of characters, is stored as NULL. And a corollary
to
> > that idiocy is that a string with two blank characters is not equal
to a
> > string with a single blank character in Oracle. 'a ' is not equal
to
> 'a
> > '. 'a ' is not equal to 'a'. Port that to another database. Seen
the
> > JOIN syntax? *sigh*
>
> Wait, I've lost something here, apparently ... but that is the case
with
> PostgreSQL as well:
>
> ams=# select ' a' = ' a';
> ?column?
> ----------
> f
> (1 row)
>
> Let me guess ... MySQL treats them as equal??
Leading space is significant.
Trailing space is not significant.
At least, in most contexts that matter.