Re: Standard Engine and OnLine - Which one and When?

Path: emory!wupost!uunet!halexii!halexv!greg From: greg@halexv.uucp (Gregory F. Hogg) Newsgroups: comp.databases.informix Message-ID: <1992Jan15.144121.763@halexv.uucp> Date: 15 Jan 92 14:41:21 GMT References: <1992Jan14.134405.8825@kingston.ac.uk> Reply-To: greg@halexv.UUCP (Gregory F. Hogg) Organization: HOGG'S SOFTWARE; Abingdon, MD In article <1992Jan14.134405.8825@kingston.ac.uk> cs_e266@kingston.ac.uk (Edwin Yau) writes: > > Standard Engine and OnLine - Which one? - and When? > >about the difference between it an the Informix `Standard Engine' (SE). One difference is that OnLine has VARCHAR and SE does not. A VARCHAR is a CHAR field without fixed legth. I have a number of databases with long CHAR fields for the longest possible values. The problem is that a CHAR(50) field takes up 50 bytes of storage even if the field is NULL. With a VARCHAR it takes up litte or no space if the field is NULL. I have used both SE and ONLINE and found that ONLINE is much faster for most operations. +++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++ Greg Hogg +++ +++ ++ ++ HOGG'S SOFTWARE +++ +++ +++++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++ voice : 410-538-7241 ++++ ++++ ++++ ++++ fax : 410-538-6130 ++++ +++++ +++++ ++++ uucp : uunet!halexii!greg ++++ ++++++ ++++++ ++++ cis : 74176,1320 -- +++++++++++++++++ +++++++++++++++++++ Greg Hogg +++ +++