We have values in our legacy customer databases like this for a value,

 

and it is a char(60).  We cannot change customers data and we cannot change customers column types, so we would like to be able to use EF 4 trim or ltrim.  So when we retrieve data we need to be able to trim off the padded spaces.

 

Thanks,

Kurt Pinniger

CDC Software

 

 

 

Canonical functions like Trim and LTrim are supported today when using Entity SQL in DevForce.  The PassthruEsqlQuery is used for ESQL queries in DevForce.   You can find more information here - http://drc.ideablade.com/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/passthruesql-query - http://drc.ideablade.com/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/passthruesql-query

 

The "AfterGet" property interceptor might be a better alternative for the char fields.  With an AfterGet interceptor you can modify the value before it's returned from a property getter, so you could use this to strip off spaces.  It's true that the queried data would still have spaces when returned from the EntityServer, but since results are compressed before sending to the client the extra spaces probably don't cause a significant increase in payload size.  If you want more information on property interceptors this is a good place to start - http://drc.ideablade.com/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/attribute-interception - http://drc.ideablade.com/xwiki/bin/view/Documentation/attribute-interception .