Storing Integers As Character Strings

I'm revisiting a principle I was taught 15 odd years ago and wondering if it is still current - I've tried trawling through the ISO standards and either its not defined as a standard or my searching wasn't good enough! (probably the latter).

Basically, I'm putting together a list of standards on data labelling conventions for column names etc (based on the ISO ones) for the developers where I work and I've come up with a bit of a dilemma and would like some thoughts and guidance.

I was taught many years ago to store house numbers, telephone numbers etc as charcter strings i.e. varchar, varchar2, char etc, reason being that the operations that would be carried out on these attributes would be textual in nature i.e. you might concat house number to street name but you're hardly likely to do mathematical functions on house numbers (though I did once use a modulo function on house numbers in a marketing campaign to get 1/2 the houses in a street sent one mailer and the other 1/2 another....but I digress).

I would be interested in being pointed towards the 'current' thinking and if what I was instructed way back then is still relevant or if I was totally misguided....

Thanks for all your help in anticipation, your feedback is always valued and taken on board.

S Received on Thu Mar 24 2005 - 12:17:13 CET