The code to get read the value of a system variable was extracting its value 
on PREPARE stage and was substituting the value (as a constant) into the parse tree.
Note that this must be a reversible transformation, i.e. it must be reversed before
each re-execution.
Unfortunately this cannot be reliably done using the current code, because there are
other non-reversible source tree transformations that can interfere with this
reversible transformation.
Fixed by not resolving the value at PREPARE, but at EXECUTE (as the rest of the 
functions operate). Added a cache of the value (so that it's constant throughout
the execution of the query). Note that the cache also caches NULL values.
Updated an obsolete related test suite (variables-big) and the code to test the 
result type of system variables (as per bug 74).