Re: 2 questions

David Rajaratnam wrote:
>
> I've got a couple of questions I was hoping someone could help
> me with. I've done a search through dejanews but couldn't find
> the answer so...I know what I think the answers are I just
> wouldn't mind confirmation.
>
> 1) What sort of percision does the DATE type go to? From what
> I can gather it only does to the nearest second. Is this
> correct?
>
> 2) Does oracle allocate space for entries in a record that
> have no data in them? I suspect that it does (except for
> variable length datatypes such as VARCHAR2). The reason
> I ask is that a table structure I'm creating will probably
> be very sparse (eg. given table with columns 1...10, for
> every record I might only have 1 or 2 columns with actual
> data in them). Will oracle be able to optimise the space
> or should I look at creating a more flexible (and complex)
> set of tables to model what I want?
>
> Thanks for you time
>
> Dave
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------
> David Rajaratnam Ph: (08) 8259 6501
> ACC Group Fax: (08) 8259 6011
> DSTO Australia
> ------------------------------------------------
Hi,

Q1: As I know Oracle deals only with seconds Q2: Oracle doesn't allocate more memory as it actually needs to hold the field's value.

        To calculate the tablespace-size Oraacle recommends to use the average field size (plus some admin overhead See Oracle DBA-Handbook published by Oracle/pres and Osborne).

-- 
Regards

M.Gresz    :-)