Re: [libdbi-devel] libdbi doesn't handle unsigned int and unsigned long long types (Patch attached)

[Frederic G. <fgo...@fr...>]

Markus Hoenicka wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Frederic Gonieaux writes:
>  > Hi,
>  > 
>  > Most of the dbi drivers don't handle correctly the column types
>  > unsigned int and unsigned long long.
>  > 
> 
> SQL does not support unsigned integers. Unsigned integers are a MySQL
> extension of the standard and as such not portable. At least SQLite,
> PostgreSQL, and Firebird do not use unsigned integers (maybe Oracle
> does, I don't know).

> The current behaviour emulates unsigned integers in a portable way
> which works across all supported database engines. It is questionable
> whether your mysql driver patch would offer that much benefit as the
> extended range of unsigned integers would be limited to users of that
> driver.

> I'm open for discussions whether this is a useful feature or not.

Ok, I didn't know that, please excuse my newbiness.
Using libdbi for a school project, I've only tried my code
on MySQL so far.

I was actually confused by the functions dbi_result_get_uint,
dbi_result_get_ulong, dbi_result_get_ulonglong.
I was expecting that these functions return full unsigned integers,
well at least for MySQL.
IMO, it would be a good thing to make clear the behavior of these
functions in the documentation.

I think portability shouldn't be dictated by the library.
That way, we can optimize for certain databases, and still keep
compatibility with others.

Take care.