char vs. varchar

Posted in 2000

Red Valsen — Wed, 05 Apr 2000 09:40:45 -0400 — source: Informix-list mailing list archive (1991-1998)

My Java developers have been struggling mightily against character type columns. They have been carping about the need to trim, in one way or another, trailing blanks from all manner of values they pull from tables. Why can't all those nasty fixed length columns be varchar(255)? Arguments of higher overhead and storage requirements didn't satisfy. Why shouldn't all those chars be varchars? And exactly what are the higher overhead and storage requirements?