xml-dev - Re: XML and LDAP: Common APIs?

[tpassin@home.com]

John F. Schlesinger asked,

> Well, the problem isn't whether the query engine needs to know the data
> type, it is whether I need to know the data type to formulate the query -
or
> maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree?
>
 Well, maybe not...  Back to an SQL example, if I ask

select employee_name, employee_age from employee

I don't have to know the data type - unless the database is going to stuff
it into a memory location for me.  Then I would have to know, although the
machinery might handle this for me.  But the query might well return text,
in which case I will get a string that represents the age value.  Or I might
be able to cast the age to a string within the query itself.

So once again, it depends!

Cheers,

Tom Passin