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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: char is going away?
How's about applications written in ancient awful 4GLs like PowerHouse that
do not handle variable length fields (aka "columns") in their own files, and
therefore do not directly support them in relational DBs either?
Did I mention that this application also RELIES on the OCI bug that allows a date column to contain a zero (as opposed to the zero-date) that can't be done thru normal SQL?
SELECT TO_CHAR(lastused,'YYYY') FROM mytables;
TO_CHAR(
Hmmmm...I forgot about that in testing our 9i upgrade...
Rich
Rich Jesse System/Database Administrator rjesse_at_qtiworld.com Quad/Tech Inc, Sussex, WI USA
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 10:35 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Wednesday, December 10, 2003, 11:09:27 AM, Gene Gurevich (gurelei_at_yahoo.com) wrote:
GG> Someone told me that Oracle is planning to retire char GG> variable and therefore they need to be replaced by GG> varchar2. Has anyone heard anything about it?
I've not heard anything like this. I'm skeptical that it's true. The ANSI standard defines a fixed-length type analogous to CHAR, so phasing out CHAR would seem to take Oracle in a direction *away* from the standard, and that seems out-of-character. Lately, Oracle seems to have emphasized compliance with the SQL standard.
Would it even make sense to dispense with CHAR? I admit, I've never found it too useful, but I'm sure there are applications that use it. Any phase-out would surely need to take place over a very long period of time.
What good reasons might an application have to use and depend on CHAR variables?
Best regards,
Jonathan Gennick --- Brighten the corner where you are
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Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net
--
Author: Jesse, Rich
INET: Rich.Jesse_at_qtiworld.com
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