Oracle-L: Re: char vs. varchar in a data warehouse

From: Thomas Day <tday6_at_csc.com>
Date: Wed, 05 Jun 2002 08:38:41 -0800
Message-ID: <F001.00475276.20020605083841@fatcity.com>

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. They have a silly reason for wanting to use varchar2 but I believe that we've had this discussion before and the reasons for using char on fields of length 1 were not terribly compelling.

On the other hand, "not want to have to deal with a 'space'" makes me shudder. You do have reason to believe that these developers know what they're doing, right?

                                                                                           
                    YTTRI Lisa                                                             
                    <lisa.yttri          To:     Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L      
                    @cnh.com>            <ORACLE-L_at_fatcity.com>                            
                    Sent by: root        cc:                                               
                                         Subject:     char vs. varchar in a data warehouse 
                                                                                           
                    06/05/2002                                                             
                    11:53 AM                                                               
                    Please                                                                 
                    respond to                                                             
                    ORACLE-L

Hi -

We are in the process of building a data warehouse and data stores. This will be built on a Sun Solaris (2.8) machine running Oracle 9i R1. Estimates are approximately 180GB.

The developers have defined most of their small character fields as varchar2
- even the ones of size 1! They tell me that if the column does not have a value, they do not want to have to deal with a 'space' when manipulating that value.

Does this make sense? Should I be pursuing this further or shouldn't I care
as the DBA?

Lisa

--
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
--
Author: YTTRI  Lisa
  INET: lisa.yttri_at_cnh.com

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L


(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may

also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).



-- 
Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.com
-- 
Author: Thomas Day
  INET: tday6_at_csc.com

Fat City Network Services    -- (858) 538-5051  FAX: (858) 538-5051
San Diego, California        -- Public Internet access / Mailing Lists
--------------------------------------------------------------------
To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message
to: ListGuru_at_fatcity.com (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in
the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L


(or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from).  You may

also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).

Received on Wed Jun 05 2002 - 11:38:41 CDT