Column space requirements - VARCHAR2 versus NUMBER

Hello,

Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition Release 10.2.0.3.0 - 64bit

I have a table that will contain around 300 million rows so space utilization is a primary criterion for the design of the table.

One of the columns will be loaded with a variable length numeric value from 1 to 9999999999 that will contain leading zeroes.

Since this numeric column value is not used in any computations, if space were not so paramount, I would normally define it as varchar2(10) but we are considering defining it as NUMBER (realizing that we will lose the leading zeroes when the column is populated).

My understanding is that the NUMBER datatype will generally require less space than the VARCHAR2 datatype but is defining the column as NUMBER a reasonable design compromise?

TIA Luke Received on Tue May 03 2011 - 20:26:42 CDT