RE: char vs. varchar in a data warehouse

Hi,
I am sure u probably know this already a leading null value column will take up a byte and like in the second case where the first column is null and the second column has a value the av row length is increased by 1 as the null takes up a byte. If the first col had a value and the second column had a null, then only the first one would have been stored. So its a good practice to put the columns with frequnet nulls at the end of the table so that it will decrease the ave row length and increase the data density.

Regards,
Madhavan

> But in a blockdump I just did, for a null row (tow columns both null)
> there
> is nothing in the dump, for second row(first col null, second has
> value) the
> first column value is shown as '*NULL*' I believe the discussion was
> something related to how null and empty string is handled. But here
> again in
> 816 the empty strings are not shown once again.
>
> Oracle 8161
>

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Madhavan Amruthur
DecisionPoint Applications

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