Oracle case sensitvity and Oracle Packages.
DELPHI 1.0 with BDE 2.5.


Case Sensitivity Naming Convention in Oracle

If a string is not quoted Oracle will convert it into uppercase.  
A good example of this is doing a non-live query such as,

select *
from owner.mytable

A non-live query will be sent directly (pass through) to Oracle.  
Oracle converts all non-quoted strings to uppercase.  So if the 
table name is MYTABLE, the above query will work.  The same above 
query will fail if you make it live and the table name is MYTABLE.  
This is due to the BDE processing the query and putting quotes 
around the table name.

The same holds true for owner, package, function and procedure 
names.  If they are created without using quotes, then the 
procedure and function name will be in uppercase. 


Packages Defined

Packages contain procedures and functions (sub-programs).  These 
sub-programs can be declared to be public, otherwise they are private.  Public 
means that a user can execute the sub-program.  Private means that 
only other sub-programs within the package may execute them.  As 
an example, to execute a procedure in a package use can use the 
following syntax:

schema.packagename.PROCNAME 
or just
packagename.PROCNAME

Note the case on the procedure name...


Packages and Delphi:

A storedProc component in Delphi is processed through the BDE.  
This means that the name specified in the StoredProcName property 
must be in the proper case.

Delphi 1.0 / BDE 2.5 does not recognize packages automatically.  
You can type in the package.procname directly into the 
StoredProcName property and 
define the Params property by hand to access a sub-program within 
a package.

You can conclude from the above information that creating Oracle 
components with names using only uppercase, and referecing them 
using only uppercase, is the best bet for achieving a more 
trouble free programming experience.

CJones 8/3/95