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Storing Integers As Character Strings

From: <gibsong4077_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: 24 Mar 2005 03:17:31 -0800
Message-ID: <1111663051.775953.308120_at_g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> 





Dear All,



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 - 12:17:31 CET












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