ADE find/replace case sensitivity

Summary

In 7.6, the Find was insensitive but the Replace was sensitive. This resulted in fewer rows being modified than what was found in the Find. In other words, it was a hidden defect.

Making Find and Replace consistent was important to ensure that the users changes were predictable between what was found and what was replaced.

However, making Replace case-inconsistent is less precise, therefore less safe.

In the fix, this consistency was applied to all fields, including linked records. Linking to records in a case insensitive way may result in the wrong record being linked, which could be very dangerous when considering all the ways in which records are linked together across all platform and application functionality, and that it is not until the edit is saved into the backend is the link truly active.

Case Sensitivity Investigation

Confirming it is not possible to create points with the same name, different case

Using ADE, it is not possible to create two points with the same name but differ in case. For example: "Pressure" and "pressure" cannot both exist in the database, since the table index is case-insensitive.

Confirming that the backend experience matches ADE

Searching, Find and Replace in ADE

Consider points named: "Foo", "Food", "FoOdy" and "foods"

Filter on "Foo*" matches them all.

Searching "foo*" matches only "foods". Searching on "Foo*" matches only "Foo" and "Food".

Using regular expressions can yield all the expected results.

Search for "[Ff]oo*" and activate Regular Expressions, it will match "Foo", "Food" and "foods", but not "FoOdy". To match them all, if you didn’t know how case was used, the expression would have to be “[Ff][Oo][Oo]*”.

Enabling Regular Expression on the Search filter is not documented, nor is it easy to use.

User must right click to the left of the string, inside the text field. Not on the binoculars, not on the text itself, and not to the right of the text in the text field.

Regular expression enable pop-up will appear to the right, and does not present an obvious click target to active the checkbox.

Once activated, a small pink “x” will appear where the user right-clicked. Right clicking on this pink “x” will pop-up the regular expression pop-up, and the checkbox will appear checked.