Re: blob's vs varchar

>I am wondering about anyones opinion on the best choice for >a comment field in a table > >The comment could be from a sentence to pages and pages long > >our DBA would like to implement a varchar 256 for short comments >and only have a blob for comments over 256 chars The blob will require 56 bytes of header information even if it is null. If the text column is going to be part of the row, then that space will be utilized, no matter what. For my part, I think that by having short vrs long comments is overly complicated and will increase the logic that the programmers will have to develope. I'd go with the text fields only. However, there is a performance hit with text columns, as the text column does not reside on the same page as the rest of the data. Thus an aditional IO will be required if the text column is selected. Madison Pruet