Case insensitivity (was Re: browse keys (@bk))

[Courtney]

I have been watching this trend and one idea keeps popping up...why is there
no option to look for EXACTLY what I want (easier than doing lookups, then
looking at what is found and skipping those that dont match..)... I might
want to find just all the Smith but not Smithsonian, Smithy, etc...I should
be able to do a lookup that matches EXACTLY...maybe a different switch or
something...

On Wed, Jul 21 14:26 , while impersonating an expert on the internet,
Fairlight sent this to stdout:

> Four score and seven years--eh, screw that! At about Wed, Jul
> 21, 2004 at 02:18:38PM -0400, Brian K. White blabbed on about:

> > That is why such things are handled with account numbers,
> > invoice numbers, check numbers, etc... instead of by "account
> > name" and "part description"

> And you would expect Cingular to look up their rate plan
> details from a rate plan by what common field (just by way of
> recent example)?

I watched the person who handled my son's account as he added my
cell to that package, and there is no way you can determine what is
in the Cingular package by the package ID number.  The guy trying
to find the right plan - out of well over 20 - was really
furstrated.

Watching the guy work the system for about 20 minutes to add two
phones, that included at least two calls to the main office, to
unlock records, made me think they'd be far better off with filePro
than whatever they were using.

It may be a good database, but the design was very very bad.

And that included many places where you would look at one screen,
write down some info, and then add that in at another.

Struck me about normal for a phone company :-)

> > You simply don't put letters in your unique identifier fields
> > if at all avoidable, and where not avoidable, don't expect
> > case sensativity (as a general rule, not just fp, like
> > inventory model numbers, mac addresses & other hex values,
> > government form numbers, etc...) and finally, if there is

> I wholly disagree. I can't even enumerate the large number of
> "unique" identifiers I've seen in -many- industries, which make
> use of letters. Try UPS shipping numbers, for an off-the-cuff
> example.

And years ago building a filePro app for a spa company, you
could tell the part by looking at the ID and nothing the letters in
combinations with the numbers.

And adding letters to a numeric string makes them more readable and
memorable. The older participants here will remember the days when
license numbers on cars were almost always only numeric and were 7
or 8 digits long. It has been shown that grouping numbers and
letters make them more memorable.

That's why many states use two group of numbers or numbers and
letters.  It makes a license plate easy to remember.

Even grouping numbers - with -'s or another character between
them - breaks them into memorable groups. That's part of the
reasoning behind the nnn-nnnn format in telephone numbers.

Long numeric strings with nothing else really should be avoided
if humans are ever going to have to work with them.

Bill
--
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com
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