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FireDAC can do DBMS back-end conditional SQL via Conditional Substitution

Posted by jpluimers on 2020/09/17

Though the field-types mentioned in the problem and solution are equal (so either is wrong), the solution in [WayBackI have a little problem with FireDAC and the TStringField and TWideStringField design time generation… – Juan C. Cilleruelo – Google+ pointed out by Jeff Weir is interesting: FireDAC supports conditionals that depend on the DBMS back-end, so you can differentiate between them.

The feature is called Conditional Substitution and has been present ever since AnyDAC (which got bought by Embarcadero, transformed into FireDAC, then after Idera bought Embarcadero, the main developer got pink-slipped).

The AnyDAC documentation is in the wayback machine, though you have to disable the onload event in order to read it.

The [Archive.is] XE5: Preprocessing Command Text (FireDAC) – RAD Studio documentation is not much different from the current state [Archive.is].

More background reading is at [WayBack] www.freepascal.org/~michael/articles/anydac2/anydac2.pdf and Cary Jensen covered it in his 2017 course on FireDAC of which you can see the free ToC.

Example from that thread:

SELECT ART.CD_ITEM                ,
       ART.CD_FAMILY              ,
       ART.CD_CATALOGUE           ,
       CAT.DS_CATALOGUE           ,
       FAM.DS_FAMILY              ,
{IF MSSQL}
       CASE WHEN EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM CONFIGURATIONS COM WHERE COM.CD_PARENT = ART.CD_ITEM)
          THEN CAST('Y' AS NVARCHAR) 
          ELSE CAST('N' AS NVARCHAR) 
       END HAS_CONFIGURATION      ,
{fi}
{IF FIREBIRD}
       CASE WHEN EXISTS(SELECT 1 FROM CONFIGURATIONS COM WHERE COM.CD_PARENT = ART.CD_ITEM)
          THEN 'Y'  
          ELSE 'N'  
       END HAS_CONFIGURATION      ,
{fi}
       ART.DS_ITEM                ,
       ART.CD_TAX                 ,
       TAX.DS_TAX                 ,
       TAX.PRC_TAX               ,
...

Given the problem statement, the casts likely should have been VARCHAR instead of NVARCHAR, but the construct can be very powerful.

–jeroen

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