Re: Help: VARCHAR2

yes. varchar or varchar2 is used far more often when the desire is to "save" storage. and is applicable when reducing code complexity not having to deal with blank padding.

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In article <48044f$t5s_at_news.rain.org>, mejojo_at_rain.org (PeachBrandy) wrote:



> Michael A McKenney <mckennem_at_ncr.disa.mil> wrote:


> 

> >I've been reading alot of documentation that seems to reflect that

 varchar2 is 


> >the default character representation for Oracle.  I'm coming from a DB2


 world 


> >where varchar is something to stay away from except in very restricted cases 


> >where disk space is extremely constrained.  I/O constraints and systems 

> >performance are my more normal concerns.  It would seem to me that any

 kind of 


> >varchar implementation would necessarily require at least twice the I/O


 overhead 


> >for screen presentation and indexing than a similar char implementation.  


> >Comments?

> 

> VARCHAR (VARCHAR2) is a highly standard storage form in RDBMS systems.

> The overhead of storing a fixed-length area that contains nothing is

> much greater than processing a variable-length column. I/O times for

> reading the big NOTHINGs are far greater than processing times to

> handle variable length data.

> 

> Me