RE: Storing single numbers in the database

Sandra,  

The only issue is that this is an intuitively wrong choice and a weak argument from the developer. S/he is basically saying "I'm too lazy to treat a value and a database column the correct way". You can't stop s/he from doing this. There will be more important things to fight over.  

There is no Oracle issue with storing a number in a char or varchar field. Think of it this way - if s/he decided to store a Y or N value instead, would you care?  

Tom    

From: oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org
[mailto:oracle-l-bounce_at_freelists.org] On Behalf Of Sandra Becker Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 3:05 PM
To: Baumgartel, Paul
Cc: oracle-l
Subject: Re: Storing single numbers in the database  

Paul,  

The developer believes that numbers are just characters, same as letters, ergo they are treated the same way in the database. I know that the values are stored with different types, but beyond that, I don't know what issues could bite me. I have seen code for other columns defined as CHAR or VARCHAR2 that use <, >, and <> to pull the desired rows. Would this be relevant to the discussion as well?  

Sandy  

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