On Fri, 1 Dec 2006, Kevin Murphy wrote:
> On Nov 30, 2006, at 7:50 PM, Jonesy wrote:
>> On Thu, 30 Nov 2006 14:16:16 -0800, Kevin Murphy wrote:
>>>
>>> I have some text that comes out of a database all in uppercase (old
>>> IBM Mainframe that only supports uppercase characters).
>>
>> I see via other followups that you have your kludge working. *But* ,
>>
>> What do you mean by "old IBM Mainframe that only supports uppercase
>> characters"? The EBCDIC codes X'81' > X'89' (a-i), X'91' > X'99' (j-r),
>> and X'A2' > X'A9' (s-z) have been defined and used since probably before
>> you were born. I have in front of me my first IBM Green Card (IBM
>> System/360 Reference Data, GX20-1703-3) from 1966 which debunks that
>> urban legend.
>>
>> If the data in the mainframe database is all upper case, it was sloppy
>> programming or sloppy design that got it there. If it _is_ stored in
>> the mainframe database in proper UC/lc form, then it is probably a
>> sloppy extraction procedure that is to blame for your input.
>
> Yeah, that would be the problem. My website and its MySQL database are totally
> seperate from this data (its class schedule data). All the data in the database
> is uppercase and I've been told that all the data must remain as uppercase
> only. Why? I have no idea. Can I change that? Nope. Welcome to my world and the
> joys of working with governmental institutions.
>
> So I did misspeak before. The mainframe itself probably supports UC/lc, but
> whatever program is on it, or maybe its just a procedure issue (its _always_
> been done this way so we _must_ continue doing it that way....). But, the data
> I see in my extract is all upper case and that's what I am dealing with.
Ahhh... So, it was sloppy design -- Way Back Then. Except, in
MainFrame years, the arrival of the WWW and URL's was only weeks ago.
There is no excuse for that DB design to be all uppercase, since that
would pollute the data (URL's) and 'they' had to know it even then.
Gov. work + lowest bidder .........
Good luck with the project.
And, Happy Shopping Season.
Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | jonz | W3DHJ | linux
Pueblo, Colorado | @ | Jonesy | OS/2 __
38.24N 104.55W | config.com | DM78rf | SK
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