Re: ResultSetMetaData + CachedResultSet bug

[Kris Jurka <books(at)ejurka(dot)com>]

On Fri, 30 Jun 2006, Thomas Hallgren wrote:

> I think the current -1 is reasonable for non numeric types. For the numeric 
> types however, the interpretation should be that 0 is unlimited. A numeric 
> should never return -1 and should accept setPrecision(colidx, 0) as 'no 
> limit', i.e.
>
> 0 = unlimited
> -1 = not applicable
>
> A setPrecision call on types where precision has no meaning should IMO yield 
> an exception.
>
> The rationale is that a) stating that a varchar has zero decimal digits is 
> wrong since it doesn't have any notion of decimal digits, and b) a precision 
> of zero for a numeric doesn't make sense when interpreted verbatim.

I'm not sure what the harm in using zero for text types' precision is. 
Yes, I agree it'd be best if all applications were smart enough to use the 
type information correctly, but they're not.  Especially when it's 
something in the standard JDK that everyone uses I think we should try to 
work around it if we can.

What about scale for an unspecified numeric?  zero is a legitimate scale 
so that can't be used for unlimited, but RowSetMetaDataImpl doesn't like 
anything < 0.

Kris Jurka