Re: LONG vs. Multiple VARCHAR2

In article <402p4q$95b_at_kaiwan.kaiwan.com> contillo_at_kaiwan.com (Michael Contillo) writes:

> My question is: Given the situation, what are the advantages and
> disadvantages of using a LONG datatype to store freeform text?

There are restrictions on LONG data, one of which you know already: they can't be pattern matched. They can't be indexed. They can't occur in subqueries. There can be at most one in a table. With OCI, there's no way to find out how big they are. The advantage, of course, is that you can store arbitrarily large amounts of text. If you decide to use LONG, you might want to put all LONG data in a separate table (with a length field) and put foreign keys in other tables.

Tim Boemker
Optimum Group
(513) 577-7785 Received on Mon Aug 07 1995 - 00:00:00 CEST