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Newsgroups: comp.databases.ms-sqlserver
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 16:57:41 -0700 (PDT)
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Subject: Re: Odbc and client library/drivers
From: rja.carnegie@gmail.com
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Xref: csiph.com comp.databases.ms-sqlserver:1304

How about using views on the server on the same table - then you can 
stick to using "SELECT *" in queries, but you can use different column 
orders on the same table in different views.  In MS SQL Server,
I suppose probably in Oracle as well, you can also INSERT, UPDATE,
and DELETE on a view.

Also, if your elderly ODBC tool is upset by some modern data types,
then you could use views so that those columns either don't appear,
or are CONVERT-ed to something more digestible.

For INSERT etc., in such a case, you may be able to define triggers 
on a view that intercept an action that makes excessively simple 
assumptions about the nature of a table where you have actually
used a view, and, instead, the trigger performs complicated data
operations that your client program doesn't need to control directly.