Re: Difference between CHAR vs VARCHAR
Date: 1995/07/31
Message-ID: <3vinbv$3h4_at_ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>#1/1
ra_at_ofisa.ch (Yves Raisin) wrote:
>Hi george,
>In Oracle7 CGAR data type mean fixed length data (the data will be padded with
>spaces is it's less than column size) and VARCHAR, VARCHAR2 are variable length
>data i suggest to you to always use VARCHAR2 data type.
Yves,
We've hired a consultant to help us design a data warehouse. He says he likes to use CHAR instead of VARCHAR2 in primary key columns. I've only been using Oracle myself for under 1 year so I'm relying heavily on his expertise. My feeling is the same as yours...why use a datatype that's going to waste space? Is there any merit to his idea of using CHAR instead of VARCHAR2 for primary ket columns, but VARCHAR2 everywhere else? If so, what's the reason?
BTW we're running Oracle7 in a distributed database. The master database is running on HP-UX 9.04, the slave databases are running on Novell Netware 3.12. Received on Mon Jul 31 1995 - 00:00:00 CEST