LONG vs. Multiple VARCHAR2

From: Michael Contillo <contillo_at_kaiwan.com>
Date: 1995/08/06
Message-ID: <402p4q$95b_at_kaiwan.kaiwan.com>#1/1

My company is "upsizing" from Clipper to Oracle. We have one field where the user's can type in freeform text. For those familiar with xBase, this field is a MEMO field. In designing our Oracle tables I had thought that this field would be a LONG, however our consultant wants us to create a separate table where this freeform text would be "chunked" into several rows and stored in VARCHAR2 columns.

I understand that one of the advantages of this is that a VARCHAR2 can be searched while a long cannot, but our users currently cannot search the notes, so this is not a compelling reason to go to the trouble of writing all of the "chunking" code that would be required to accomplish this.

My question is: Given the situation, what are the advantages and disadvantages of using a LONG datatype to store freeform text?

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Michael Contillo

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If you're not living life on the edge,
you're taking up too much space!

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Received on Sun Aug 06 1995 - 00:00:00 CEST