Space used to store a foreign key constraint

If I define a pair of tables in Oracle 8.1.5 as

CREATE TABLE parent (
name VARCHAR(60) PRIMARY KEY
);

CREATE TABLE child (
name VARCHAR(60) NOT NULL REFERENCES parent(name)
);

and I insert values

INSERT INTO parent VALUES
('a value that is long enought not to want to store many of them'); INSERT INTO child VALUES
('a value that is long enought not to want to store many of them');

Does my database now *actually* contain 2 strings each of length 62 Bytes, or does Oracle 'under the hood' insert some sort of reference (perhaps like a pointer or some other trick) that does the same job but saves on storage space?

Thanks

Jos Received on Thu Oct 23 2003 - 12:02:51 CDT