Mapping data type/size

Please bare with me ... I'm still trying to 'convert' from my normal way 
of working ;)

PDO::PARAM_INT is available, but no other numeric formats?

I've been working through all the options to map data types into the 
correct internal format, but I'm not having much luck. Numeric types 
would be better passed as numbers rather than strings, but the main 
problem I'm hitting here is how to know which field types from one 
database map to another. Such as 'BOOL' which is normally handled as a 
CHAR(1) in Firebird, and also the different numeric field sizes of FLOAT 
and the like. The bottom line is that we have to know the structure of 
the table before we can use it? We can't simply ask for those details 
from the database and adjust things acordingly?

Should it be possible to force LOB fields to be connected as 
PDO::PARAM_STR? I'm not sure that this actually solves the problem since 
there is needs to be some information available to tell you which fields 
are LOB but need mapping to simple strings? However 'insert' should just 
load a string into the bound field? So it's just query that needs to 
return a string later? With Firebird we simply switch the driver to 
IBASE_TEXT mode and it returns strings. Should I be looking to add that 
to the pdo_firebird driver as an optional setting. Really until I can 
get this bit working I can't get much further using my current projects.

I regularly use date/time internally in Firebird as the numeric values 
that they are handled as but this is another area that is getting lost 
in the translation between PDO and the database. Although this may just 
be a matter of getting the right format of string conversion - I've had 
great fun with US/UK day/month ordering over the years :(

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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