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Home -> Community -> Mailing Lists -> Oracle-L -> RE: char is going away?
Jonathan
My understanding is that VARCHAR2 is not even a SQL standard, and some databases don't handle VARCHAR very efficiently, so if you are trying to sell a product that can adapt to several databases besides Oracle, you might stick to CHAR.
If your application is COBOL-based, using CHAR simplifies things quite a bit. Especially if you sell your application to many sites that want to use Oracle underneath but don't have an Oracle DBA, at least not initially. Yeah it wastes a bit of disk space.
Dennis Williams
DBA
Lifetouch, Inc.
dwilliams_at_lifetouch.com
-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2003 10:35 AM
To: Multiple recipients of list ORACLE-L
Wednesday, December 10, 2003, 11:09:27 AM, Gene Gurevich (gurelei_at_yahoo.com) wrote:
GG> Someone told me that Oracle is planning to retire char GG> variable and therefore they need to be replaced by GG> varchar2. Has anyone heard anything about it?
I've not heard anything like this. I'm skeptical that it's true. The ANSI standard defines a fixed-length type analogous to CHAR, so phasing out CHAR would seem to take Oracle in a direction *away* from the standard, and that seems out-of-character. Lately, Oracle seems to have emphasized compliance with the SQL standard.
Would it even make sense to dispense with CHAR? I admit, I've never found it too useful, but I'm sure there are applications that use it. Any phase-out would surely need to take place over a very long period of time.
What good reasons might an application have to use and depend on CHAR variables?
Best regards,
Jonathan Gennick --- Brighten the corner where you are http://Gennick.com * 906.387.1698 * mailto:jonathan@gennick.com
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Author: Jonathan Gennick
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Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services ---------------------------------------------------------------------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 Dec 10 2003 - 10:49:24 CST
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