RE: Varchar2....is this Dilbert or what?????

Since some of you have asked. The reason they came up with 255 is there was a pretense that Oracle's maximum length of a varchar2 was 255. I have corrected them on this. However I would appreciate some clarification....my understanding is the maximum in Oracle 8 for varchar2 is 4000 bytes not characters. Or essentially are they the same? Could someone say one byte is equal to one character? I did however get some clarification as to "why". Apparently one of them "heard through the grapevine" that when thinking about using multiple languages (i.e.: English and Japanese) that the same word may differ in the amount of 'characters'.  Say if we were talking about the word "description". It would take 11 characters in English, however being the Japanese characters are different
(wider) it would essentially take 22 characters. Hence the reason to make
everything 255 (there's that magic number again) as to "allot" for the character difference. But then when I started thinking about this, I thought you could only use one character set when you establish the database. So the potential of using English and Japanese in the same database shouldn't be there right?????

Again, this sounds so absurd! I know I'm blonde but I never thought in a million years I would actually feel like one!!!! Please help in the clarification.

Thanks So Much,
Christine Turner
FTP Database Administrator
IPS Sendero
Phone: (800) 321-6899 ext. 3286
Fax: (480) 946-8224
E-mail: christine.turner_at_ips-sendero.com

From: 	Christine Turner[SMTP:christine.turner_at_ips-sendero.com]
Reply To: 	ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com
Sent: 	Tuesday, May 09, 2000 3:04 PM
To: 	Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Subject: 	Varchar2....is this Dilbert or what?????

Ok, forgive me if I offend anyone....but the head honchos came and asked what the ramifications would be if we were to make every, yes EVERY varchar2 column in new database the length of 255. The reasoning behind this is...."to keep maintenace down in the future, so we don't have to change the database every time when need a column resized". I'm fairly new to being a database administrator (going on a year), but I have been working in Oracle for about 6 years and quite frankly this sounds totally obsurd! Anyone have any comments??? Pro's, Con's????

Thanks In Advance,
Christine Turner
FTP Database Administrator
IPS Sendero
Phone: (800) 321-6899 ext. 3286
Fax: (480) 946-8224
E-mail: christine.turner_at_ips-sendero.com

--
Author: Christine Turner
  INET: christine.turner_at_ips-sendero.com

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