Re: SQL Humor

Stu wrote:
> if you disregard the differences here
> because of substantial resources, why bother with any sort of datatype
> at all? If a varchar(50) will do the trick of a char(10), what's 42
> extra bytes? In the days of terabytes sized RAID arrays, why not use a
> varchar (8000) for everything? Why use an integer if a varchar will
> do? Obviously at some point, there will be a performance impact; why
> not be disciplined enough to strike at the lowest level of that curve
> and use the least expensive resource that is the best fit for your data?

Humans are notoriously bad at storage management. Storage layout is something that has to be hidden and managed automatically. When did you specify memory parameters for your web browser program (Let see: 10M for fonts, 15M for web pages cache, 5M for cookies, or, wait a minute, maybe 2M for cookies would make my browser faster?)

I want a string datatype, and can't possibly predict (and don't really care) how long it would be. Is it so difficult to design a RDBMS engine that would allow me to declare a string of arbitrary length with some rudimentary intelligence as far as storage is concerned? Received on Fri Aug 19 2005 - 00:50:39 CEST