Question

I created an MS Access table using the following code:

  tbl := Database.CreateTableDef('English', 0, '', '');
  try
    fld := tbl.CreateField('ID', dbLong, 0);
    fld.Attributes := dbAutoIncrField + dbFixedField;
    tbl.Fields.Append(fld);

    fld := tbl.CreateField('Content', dbText, 255);
    fld.Required := true;
    fld.AllowZeroLength := false;
    tbl.Fields.Append(fld);

    Database.TableDefs.Append(tbl);

    idx := tbl.CreateIndex('PrimaryKey');
    idx.Fields.Append(idx.CreateField('ID', EmptyParam, EmptyParam));
    idx.Primary := True;
    idx.Unique := true;
    tbl.Indexes.Append(idx);

    idx := tbl.CreateIndex('IX_Content');
    idx.Fields.Append(idx.CreateField('Content', EmptyParam, EmptyParam));
    idx.Primary := false;
    idx.Unique := true;
    tbl.Indexes.Append(idx);
  finally
    tbl := nil;
  end;

This works fine until I try to insert the two strings ‘Field type’ and ‘Field Type’ into this table. I get an error telling me that the unique index restricts me from doing that. As you can see they only differ in the case of the second word. Since I did not explicitly make the index case insensitive (I wouldn’t even know how to do that), I don’t quite understand why this happens. Are indices on text fields always case insensitive in MS Access? If not, what am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

Access Jet databases are fundamentally case insensitive. That is your problem. As far as I know there is no way to make an Access index case sensitive.