paulrp_at_earthlink.net said...
> Greetings,
> What is the savings of CHAR(4) vs VARCHAR(4) for storing a 4 (required)
> character code? What is the overhead in using VARCHAR for fields of required
> length?
> Thanks,
> -Paul Pruchnik
>
This is some kind of deja vu! It sounds very much like the discussions
all us developers had back in the 1950s and 1960s when disk space was
very expensive. It's the whole reason we had that Y2K thingy a few years
back ... we - me included - sacrificed everything at the altar of
consuming the smallest amount of disk space.
With such a small field (4 bytes or characters, depending on your NLS
setting), does it really matter in the 21st Century? If I had a
preference in this case, I'd go with the CHAR(4).
--
/Karsten
DBA > retired > DBA
Received on Wed Apr 02 2003 - 10:26:55 CST
