From: Jim Weirich <jweirich@...>
Date: 2002-11-12T14:12:11+09:00
Subject: Re: Problem with a select in Oracle

On Mon, 2002-11-11 at 23:37, Gavin Sinclair wrote:

> I very much doubt that there is a problem with the '@' character.  What data
> type is your email address in the database?  One gotcha with DBI is that
> queries always return Strings.

That's not entirely true.  It tends to be dependent upon the database
driver being used (this recently came to my attention).  The PostgreSQL
driver very carefully converts the SQL data types to native Ruby types. 
Evidently the Oracle driver does not do this.  This is a major
incompatibility in the drivers that should be ironed out (IMHO).

> I recommend the following things:

[... strong agreement with the given list, with comments on ...]

>  - convert the row to a hash (row.to_h) so you know exactly what
>    you're dealing with

I almost never do this.  Do you do this because you use hash methods
that aren't supported on a row object?  The original intent was that the
row would look sufficiently like a hash so that you wouldn't have to
convert it.  If still feel the need, perhaps it is not "sufficient"
enough.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich     jweirich@one.net    http://w3.one.net/~jweirich
---------------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, 
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)