VARCHAR2 vs. CHAR

Could someone shed some light on the difference between using CHAR and VARCHAR2 for strings? I understand that VARCHAR2 will be more efficient storage-wise by only using as many characters as the input string requires, but I have also heard that performance may be negatively impacted with VARCHAR2 types because Oracle must look up the length of the strings all the time.

Thanks,

BoB Pierce
bpierce_at_healthway.net Received on Tue Apr 01 1997 - 00:00:00 CST