Re: VARCHAR query

Tom wrote: > > I am setting up a table to receive data from a PBX device. I have been > told that the data can be up to 255 chars. However, in browsing some of > it, I see that rarely is it over 80. There are a lot of records - we > need to keep 30 days on line with about 300000 records per month. > Updates will not be required and the field is not indexed. > > I was wondering if a VARCHAR field would be a good idea here. I dont > know what the overhead is (ie, what my actual savings would be). Yes a varchar(255,0) would be ideal. The overhead is a single byte for the actual character count. The only downside would be if the rows were updated such that they no longer fit on their 'home' page, then a forward pointer would be put into the slot table necessitating a second disk read, perhaps for every row. Since you are not updating at all... Art S. Kagel