format is case sensitive

[dmth]

currently there is a difference between csv and CSV.

This should be fixed

[bernhardreiter]

@dmth: Why should it be fixed?

My wild guess would be robustness reasons, on the other hand, because this comes out of a database and will be entered by tools, it may not make sense to be more tolerant here. More tolerance has the drawback that future sql queries will have to deal with more than one lower-and-upper casing which is
a potential source of errors.

[dmth]

We need to separate the database from intelmq-mailgen here.
The source of the format information is the contactdb. From my point of view, it should not be a difference if the contactdb stores CSV or csv. Mailgen should be capable of processing both.

[bernhardreiter]

@dmth the question is why should it not make a difference?

I see a few cases here:
a) we only accept one specific keyword aka "csv"
b) we accept all upper and all lower case, aka "csv" and "CSV"
c) we accept all cases, aka "cSv", "csV", "CSV",...

Two implementation ideas:

1. we define a set of values that we support and make sure that all tools
   only set these, would be good for a) and each sql statement that is written for the database.
2. we allow c). Drawback: A counting sql statement will have to make sure the value is considered case insensitive otherwise counting will be bad.

[bernhardreiter]

Ping @dmth

[dmth]

I don't get your point concerning the

1. we allow c). Drawback: A counting sql statement will have to make sure the value is considered
   case insensitive otherwise counting will be bad.

Why would we need this? Is someone interested how many receivers would like to receive CSV-Mails?

We have to remind ourselves: Mailgen and the ContactDB are two different, independent applications. As mailgen just uses the data which was added by the ContactDB, it should be more robust when using this data.

[bernhardreiter]

I see Mailgen and ContactDB related, they have to work nicely together.
To me it is a design question about robustness in which sense. To me a defined values
in one capitalization just seems to be more robust.