RE: flag

Dave,

I agree with Stephane about Y/N rather than 1/0 - makes it more recognizable by humans in reports - and you don't have to translate a 1 into a Yes at report time.

Worrying about "how much storage space it takes" is just not a valid concern in my mind anymore. It takes what it takes and that's just the way it is.

I'm always more conerned about design issues - like will he field morph into a Y/N/Unknown field in the future, or what is the easiest way for an end-user report-writer to report the field at the end of the day with a simple reporting tool.

Hope this helps.

Tom Mercadante
Oracle Certified Professional

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 5:48 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L

David Turner wrote:
>
> Would you use a number or char for a flag in a table? Would you use a
> char since it's one byte and a number is 22 bytes?
>
> Dave

Dave,

   A number is *at most* 22 bytes

SQL> select vsize(0), vsize(1), vsize('Y'), vsize('N')   2 from dual;

  VSIZE(0) VSIZE(1) VSIZE('Y') VSIZE('N') ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------

         1 2 1 1

as you can see, the gain is tiny ... especially if NULL values are acceptable.
As a matter of taste, I'd prefer a char(1) but there is no strong rationale behind it, just that I find Y/N more understandable than 1/0. Still a human being :-).

-- 
Regards,

Stephane Faroult
Oriole Software
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Author: Stephane Faroult
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