Re: Why are data types size limited?

On Thu, 23 Mar 2000 21:02:28 GMT,
"Mark" == Mark Preston <mark_at_mpreston.demon.co.uk> writes:

Mark> The simple truth is that strings - or any other field - *can* be Mark> variable length if you use a field delimiting character.

This, IMO, is a braindead solution; far more robust and faster if each field has an extra (and to the user invisible) attribute called length.

Mark> This is the
Mark> basis of the Pick (and Pick-like) variable-field database system and
Mark> you can use SQL with most of those.

So you probably can't store '\0', so you can't have variable length BLOBs ?

Mark> So, your answer is: you can use variable field sizes in SQL, but most
Mark> database implementations (such as Oracle, MySQL etc.) won't allow you
Mark> to do it.

What about the various VARCHAR and VARCHAR2 types ?
                                                                      Philip

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