Re: RDBMS : Do we still live in 20th century?

> 4. This is the WRONG ANSWER anyways.
>
> The right answer would be for SQL to be extended with a keyword
> similar to "CREATE TYPE."
>
> You might thus define:
>
> CREATE TYPE CUSTOMER_ID CHARACTER VARYING(12);
>
> (Perhaps with the possibility of having additional constraints.)
>
> And then use a set of types, thus defined, to unify the handling
> of data types throughout your application.

Oracle kind of supports this with object types. ANSI also has some extensions to SQL to support this. There are, of course, some performance and manageability issues to be considered before going this route.

A. Received on Sat Jun 28 2003 - 01:16:35 CEST