Oracle-L: RE: flag

From: Babette Turner-Underwood <babette_at_rogers.com>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 19:06:38 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.0059F673.20030521190638@fatcity.com>

I liked the idea of using 0/1 for Java Boolean operations but on the other side of the argument is that we inadvertently did a datatype transformation and ended up not using the index (Oracle implicitly converted the data side to number and failed to use the index, where we compared against a field defined, based on a table and the table had been created with wrong data type AAAaaargh.

I much prefer Y/N. However because many of our applications (for Fed Govt) need to be bilingual, 1/0 is used (rather than worry about storing Oui/Non)

Babette
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 8:28 PM To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

If it's a Y/N flag (boolean) that needs to be indexed then you can just make it Y/NULL and handle it via code. This can substantially reduce the size of the index. (not talking about bitmap indexes now)

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 3:48 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Are you planning to use the flagged column as a boolean across a jdbc connection? If so, then go with a number datatype. The 9i jdbc driver does not know how to handle boolean datatype, thus if you store 'Y' in a char column the jdbc driver will throw errors when the java application calls GetBoolean against the jdbc driver.

Mark

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 1:17 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

Would you use a number or char for a flag in a table? Would you use a char since it's one byte and a number is 22 bytes?

Dave
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Author: Babette Turner-Underwood
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