Path: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu!spool.maxwell.syr.edu!drn.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!postnews.google.com!news1.google.com!newsread.com!news-xfer.newsread.com!newspeer.tds.net!sn-xit-03!sn-xit-10!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail From: Hugo Kornelis Newsgroups: microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming,comp.databases.theory Subject: Re: SQL Humor Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 00:52:07 +0200 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: References: <1124385453.899643.54220@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com> <1124389414.375636.99790@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1124390672.631946.49660@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1124391355.281387.67280@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1124396257.455079.19740@g43g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> <1124404299.928909.272180@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com> <1124405438.921335.308080@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.91/32.564 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com Lines: 41 Xref: dp-news.maxwell.syr.edu microsoft.public.sqlserver.programming:499429 comp.databases.theory:33119 On 18 Aug 2005 15:50:39 -0700, Mikito Harakiri wrote: >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?) Hi Mikito, What DBMS are you talking about here? Please remind me never to take a job that involves managing one of those.... BTW, Internet Explorer does allow you to specify maximum cache space... >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? Such a string type exists. In SQL Server, and I bet in all other major databases as well. But the flexibility comes at a price: performance suffers. So if you care about performance, you should only implement this flexibility where you need it. Best, Hugo -- (Remove _NO_ and _SPAM_ to get my e-mail address)