Re: [Gnumed-devel] External id type attributes, data consistency and validation

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 10:29:32PM -0700, Jim Busser wrote:

> I am conscious of several aspects of data input that are
> 
> - tedious to achieve consistently, and
> 
> - at risk of causing patients' records to be dropped from queries

Input is not the right place to attempt to enforce appropriate
scoping of arbitrary later queries. The query is.

Here the old adage applies:

        Be strict in what you emit. Be liberal in what you accept.

Particularly the latter.

> - do we provide 4 additional columns
> 
>       .force_upper boolean default null
>       .remove_all_spaces boolean default null
>       .zero_fill_to_length default null
>       .modulus numeric default null

The database is most definitely the wrong place to enforce
such things.

Karsten
-- 
GPG key ID E4071346 @ gpg-keyserver.de
E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD  4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346