Col discrepancies

This is a multi-part message in MIME format. ------=_NextPart_000_0054_01BF73AE.F010A670 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi list, I have inherited a 9.14 database and which is upgraded to 9.2 recently by me. On close scrutiny I saw some interesting discrepancies in designing scheme for different tables. There is a column which is defined as different data type in 2 tables e.g. Column Type Length Table cust_id varchar 15,0 hierarchy (primary key) cust_id char 10 pager_user The case above shows 2 tables hierarchy and pager_user where cust_id column is defined as varchar and char and even the lengths are different. My questions are - 1) Is it good to have primary key as a data type varchar? 2) What performance impact it may have when I join above 2 tables ? I know I cann't change length of cust_id in hierarchy table to 10 as I may loose data. What happens if I change the datatype to char of hierarchy table? The best way to get around the problem I feel is to change all foreign key columns as to like primary key columns (cust_id varchar 15,0 of hierarchy table) and let the application team work around it. Has somebody faced this problem? what was best corrective action? Thanks for any advice. ------=_NextPart_000_0054_01BF73AE.F010A670 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; name="Mukund Shevkar.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="Mukund Shevkar.vcf" BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:2.1 N:Shevkar;Mukund FN:Mukund Shevkar EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:mukundshevkar@hotmail.com REV:20000210T080937Z END:VCARD ------=_NextPart_000_0054_01BF73AE.F010A670--