[Koha-devel] MySQL - case insensitive

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 7:51 AM, Tomas Cohen Arazi <tomascohen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, I've been working on some patches and realised the collation we use for
> it in Koha is case insensitive.
>
> This might have diverse side effects.
>
> As of authorised values (which i've been dealing with) I'd like to ask if it
> is  ok they are case insensitive. If so, we should properly document it, and
> when creating a new category that is named the same (case insensitive) a
> previously defined one, we should alert the user instead of just adding the
> new authorised value.
>
> Anyway, I just wanted to hear your thoughts about this prior to filling a
> bug on this.

This is an interesting can of worms, and I wish that MySQL defaulted
to a non-case-sensitive collation.  However, it is what it is, and
changing to a non-CI collation would require a lot of testing.
Consequently, since authorized values (and library codes, and patron
categories, and so on) are effectively already case-insensitive as far
as database queries are concerned, I think it would be reasonable to
document it as such.

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Manager of Implementation
Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
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