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Date: Sun, 15 Jun 2025 14:52:11 +0000
To: Calvin Buckley <calvin@cmpct.info>
Cc: php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Interest in a binary parameter type in PDO?
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From: internals@gpb.moe ("Gina P. Banyard")

On Wednesday, 23 October 2024 at 17:36, Calvin Buckley <calvin@cmpct.info> =
wrote:

> Hi internals,
>=20
> I've been debugging some recent issues users have had, as well as
> discussing some related ones. I've come to the conclusion there's a lot
> issues with applications trying to access binary data via PDO drivers.
>=20
> For example
>=20
> - Binary data when quoting in SQL Server can easily get mangled, as the
> quoter can't handle binary data and truncates the string. It's
> possible other drivers are like this too.
> - ODBC drivers can be unpredictable behaviour wise when binding binary
> data as SQL_C_CHAR (like what the get_col handler does). In the case
> of one driver, it will hex encode the data and can confuse the size
> handling in the get_col handler.
>=20
> I've thought about overriding the LOB semantics for quick fixes, but
> this isn't the right solution, as a LOB and binary data are orthogonal;
> i.e. CLOBs are LOB strings and VARBINARY doesn't have LOB semantics. A
> binary type (or modifier, i.e. like intl/natl, not to bikeshed tho) can
> also be used w/ string columns in the database to possibly override i.e.
> automatic charset encoding changes from an ODBC driver.
>=20
> I had previously made an issue and PR (links below), but I'm discussing
> on internals to revitalize the conversation after being motivated by
> recent issues. I'd like to hear from users, database extn. developers,
> and userland database library extension developers if this is the right
> approach, and if I should move forward dusting off the PR and probably
> writing an RFC. Said PR includes the changes needed for DBLIB, ODBC, and
> SQLite driver wise, as well as some tests. MySQL/Postgres/Firebird
> support would need to be added.
>=20
> ~calvinb
>=20
> [issue]: https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/11462
> [pr]: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/11674

Sorry for the late reply,

I think this makes a lot of sense and would be in favour of including this =
in PDO.

Best regards,

Gina P. Banyard