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Re: VARCHAR length

From: David Sharples <david.sharples3_at_ntlworld.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Oct 2002 21:13:49 +0100
Message-ID: <p80p9.779$0x2.139999@newsfep2-gui>


I only did the 8i course :-)

Saying that I will go and check the course notes - interested to know if it was in there, could been the part where i was trying to fix the practise db id broken ;-)

"Richard Foote" <richard.foote_at_bigpond.com> wrote in message news:x6Vo9.49444$g9.142099_at_newsfeeds.bigpond.com...
> Hi David,
>
> That's because you didn't have Howard or myself teaching you ;)
>
> P11-12 of the Oracle9i Database Administration Fundamentals I course
> discusses the structure of a row.
>
> And Howard of course (only a little pun intended) is spot on.
>
> Cheers
>
> Richard
> "David Sharples" <david.sharples3_at_ntlworld.com> wrote in message
> news:KxJo9.2188$QY.17594_at_newsfep3-gui.server.ntli.net...
> >
> > "Karsten Farell" <kfarrell_at_medimpact.com> wrote in message
> > news:eaHo9.1596$i17.195196079_at_newssvr13.news.prodigy.com...
> > > Howard J. Rogers wrote:
> > > > I hope you're not claiming that CHAR datatypes don't use length
bytes?
> > > >
> > > > They do.
> > > >
> > > > Regards
> > > > HJR
> > >
> > > Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's been quite a while since I attended
an
> > > oracle architecture class. As you probably know, training is one of
the
> > > first things to go in a shrinking budget ... and new DBAs get trained
> > > before old-timers - as it should be, I suppose, since they have more
to
> > > learn. So I haven't heard the lecture since Oracle7 first came out.
> > > Something tells me Oracle just might have done a little work on their
db
> > > since then, eh?
> > >
> > > I thought the length of a CHAR field was stored in the data dictionary
> > > (since it never changes) and the length of a VARCHAR2 field was stored
> > > in the database row (since it potentially changes). Therefore, the
> > > starting byte position of each CHAR field can be determined at SQL
parse
> > > time (if there are no variable-length fields in front of it); but the
> > > starting position of VARCHAR2 fields cannot be determined until the
row
> > > is read into the buffer.
> > >
> >
> > Having just attended an Oracle architecture class, that was definitely
not
> > covered.
> >
> >
>
>
Received on Wed Oct 09 2002 - 15:13:49 CDT

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