Re: VARCHAR in table, CHAR in view

> So, I'm working on a system right now that has a requirement that the > character columns in our tables be of CHAR data type. This is due to an > interface with some legacy application and is not negotiable. > > My question is this- If I created a view against the table where the > only difference was that the table used VARCHAR and the view used CHAR, > would there be any kind of performance hit using the view? There > wouldn't be any filtering or joining in the view, just a one-to-one > mapping of tables to views with the data type conversion. > > Are there any internal issues I should know about before trying this? It's possible that they changed things without telling me, but last time I looked, you can't change data types with a view. The syntax is something like: CREATE VIEW my_view (vcol1, vcol2, vcol3, vcol4, vcol5) AS SELECT column1, column9, column3, column6, sum(column5) FROM my_table GROUP BY column1, column9, column3, column6; This allows you to change column names and assign names to aggregates, but does not allow specifying or changing column types. This assumes Informix 7.x. I don't know if 9.x still has this limit. Mark Collins mcollins@us.dhl.com Don't anthropomorphize computers. They don't like it.