Re: Data types

From: Louis Davidson (dr_dontspamme_sql_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/14/04 

Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2004 13:43:45 -0500

To echo Tibor's comments. If the data is variably sized, use varchar. If
all values are equally sized, use char. Ignore nulls unless you have large
fixed length values and most of them will be null and you have disk space
concerns. Programming with fixed length char value is a pain. 

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"Ann" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0b9301c4b210$2cd36990$a401280a@phx.gbl...
> Have a database that I'm not sure how to determine which
> to use... varchar or char. I've read up on it and am
> getting conflicting views. What if I have a lot of fields
> that are 8 characters or less? I thought I should use
> char, but then I've read that you shouldn't if those
> fields can be null. These fields can be null so should I
> use varchar then? How do I determine which to use? Thanks!

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