Re: Why is VARCHAR2(4000) bad ?

From: joel garry <joel-garry_at_home.com>
Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2008 11:04:36 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <984f2141-24c2-4a38-9184-17f01920d62d@n20g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>


On Jan 21, 1:20 pm, Niall Litchfield <niall.litchfi..._at_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 21, 8:17 pm, Harel <guh..._at_yahoo.com> wrote:

>
> > - Why do I have problems if I use 4000 ?
>
> Consider the implications for both code and design. In addition
> consider data quality. If I design a table to hold the projects my
> team are working on then I might use this design
>
> create table project(
> name varchar2(20) primary key,
> manager varchar2(20) not null,
> description varchar2(128)
> ...
> );
>
> and get reasonable descriptions
>
> now try
>
> create table project(
> name varchar2(20) primary key,
> manager varchar2(20) not null,
> description varchar2(4000)
> ...
> );
>
> how good will the descriptions be?
>

I am a master of abstraction, but we have very different ideas of a good project description! :-)

jg

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Received on Tue Jan 22 2008 - 13:04:36 CST

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