I have a table that contains a lot of demographic information. The data is usually small (<20 chars) but ocassionally needs to handle large values (250 chars). Right now its set up for varchar(max) and I don't think I want to do this.
How does varchar(max) store info differently from varchar(250)? Either way doesn't it have to hold the container information? So the word "Crackers" have 8 characters to it and information sayings its 8 characters long in both cases. This meaning its taking up same amount of space?
Also my concern will be running queries off of it, does a varchar(max) choke up queries because the fields cannot be properly analyzed? Is varchar(250) any better?
Should I just go with char(250) and watch my db size explode?
Usually the data that is 250 characters contain a lot of blank space that is removed using a SPROC so its not usually 250 characters for long.
i have table Table1 with column lastname ,firstname ect.The Data type is varchar. I have inserted values. I have selected records from this table and assign this records to the TDC control of the HTML .The query returns 130 records.The TDC control has the Unicode delimiter. Whene we select top 7 ,seven records are displayed ,when it is top 8 it does not show any records. If we delete the Lastname and Firstname values for this 8th record then all the 130 records are displayed. Why is this happning.Any great minds can help me in this pls
Does any body know of any performance implications of using 'varchar' data type against 'char'?
I have some columns that are using 'char' data type, but the data in them is not fixed length. So, to gain some disk space I am planning to change the data type to 'varchar'. But, I am concerned if there will be any performance de-gradation or any other implications of doing this.
I have recently inherited a database where all of the tables use varchar instead of chars for fields. Very , very few of these fields are involved in keys of even indices, but performance is an issue. I thought that I had read that varchars are worse for performance than chars when page splits may occur. Is this related to updates only, or does it matter?
Hi, This question may sound silly,but please comment. Please tell me a situation where char should be used and not varchar. Let us assume that we are dealing with non unicode characters. Well, I find varchar is always smarter than char, so why char? Thanks!! Rudra
i would like to know if there is an overhead in using VARCHAR when you use to store it...
a colleague of mine claims that if the field is defined to be VARCHAR the system creates and additional column DOUBLE/DECIMAL with storage size of 17/18bytes.
such that if the size of the varchar field is less than 30 it is better to be defined as CHAR instead.
please help me out here... i think there's something wrong with his statement, but i need concrete proof to it... a link to page or pdf file would be very much appreciated.
Greetings,I have a question. I work on some SQL2k/ASP.NET apps at work. Mypredacessor, who created the databases/tables seemed to have liked touse 'char' for all text fields. Is there a reason why he would havedone this over using varchar? It's a minor annoyance to always have toRTRIM data and it makes directly making changes to the database moreannoying (with all the pointless trailing spaces)?I usually use char for fixed string lengths, like state abbreviationsor something, and varchar for strings of unknown length.Is it a performance issue? Our database doesn't do much traffic, forthe most part.
I have one question to all SQL Guru's I know the basic difference between CHAR and VARCHAR of CHAR taking all the space it is declared with and VARCHAR taking only amount of space used.
I want to know or link to any doucment which gives the difference between CHAR and VARCHAR more than what is mentioned above.
helloHow could I check how many chars are in record, defined as varchar(8000).It's obvious that in such defined record could be 1 char to 8000 char. Butwhat query to SQL database should I post to give information about realylenght of this records ?thanks from advanceAdam
Hi,I'm planning the structure of a SqlServer 2005 database for a newapplication.The requirement is that primary keys must be "natural"; i.e. in the tableCustomers the primary key will be a max. 10 characters string (but thestring may be filled i.e. with only 5 charachters).Should I define these primary keys as char[5] or varchar[5]?I'm interested in your opinion in particular about performace issue, becausethere will be tables with millions of records...Thanks,Davide.
all these while i've only used varchar for any stringi heard from my ex-boss that char helps speed up searches. is thattrue?so there are these:1) char with index2) char without index3) char with clustered index4) varchar with index5) varchar without index6) varchar with clustered indexsome of my tables primary key (clustered) is a string type. would itbe benificial to use char? or would using (6) makes no difference?for non primary key columns that needs to be searched a lot, can i say(1) is the best?
Hi,This is probably an easy question for someone so any help would beappreciated.I have changed the columns in a table that where nvarchar to the samesize of type varchar so halve the space needed for them.I have done this a) becuase this is never going to be an internationalapplication, b) we are running out of space and c) there are 100million rows.I have done this with the alter table statement which seems to work butthe space used in the database hasn't altered.I'm presuming that the way the records are structured within the tablethere is just now more space free inbetween each page???Is there a way or re-shrinking just an individual table and free upsome of the space in there or am i missing the point somewhere?Thanks in advance,Ian
Hi, is there a type of data that we don't need to specify the length but can grow dynamically?instead of using varchar 2000, a type that acts like a varchar but the length is unlimited ....Thanks,
Hi, everyone, I want to know is there a way for me to set varchar to store more than 8000 characters? (I did checked from sql server books online and i know that the maximum storage for varchar, but i just want to know is there any exceptional way for me to store more than that).
I have upsized some tables from ms access (using the wizard) which has created many nvarchar fields. I know the system doesn't need unicode characters so I straight away changed them to varchar and the system is all working but am now deciding on which ones to change to char as I understand you get a performance gain. I am trying to do this without changing much ms access front end code so don't want to deal with rtrim I am thinking change the ones I can guarantee the length of. These happen to be the primary keys.
My questions are is this the correct way of doing things, am I correct in assuming I would have to rtrim alot in program code if I changed all to char.
Finally and. most importantly what about a single character field which could be null can I make this a char(1) and it will still return null if empty as it would as a varchar(1). I suppose this question is how does the padding work is it the character followed by a number of nulls (ascii 0 I think).
Sorry for the multiple questions but I think they are all related
Having a brain fart and can't figure this out...I have 2 databases I need to join:db1.customer.customer_no char(15) right justified, zero paddedsample customer numbers:000000000000001000000000000010000000000000234000000000012345db2.customer.customer_no varchar(20) left justified, no paddingsample customer numbers:11023412345How do I join tables on customer_no? Use cast, convert? Strip zeroes fromdb1 table?Thanks.
can anybody please explain me why microsoft using nvarchar/nchar instead of varchar/char in northwind database and pubs database. I know if a column holds unicode data you should use nvarchar or nchar but for me all those tables in northwind/pubs are not holding unicode data. but still why microsoft settled for nchar/nvarchar.
Could someone please help me by explaining which one is best to use and when? For example, storing the word "Corona Del Mar" - which Data Type would be suggested? Thanks.
Would it be OK to use varchar(5) instead of char(5) as the first field of acomposite clustered index?My gut tells me that varchar would be a bad idea, but I am not finding muchinformation on this topic on this when I Google it.Currently the field is Char(4), and there is a need to increase it to hold 5characters.TIA
Working on partitioning a few large tables. One of the tables included a text column and the €śTEXTIMAGE_ON [PRIMARY]€? clause which would prevent the partitioning of this table. After some research we found that the data was legacy and no longer used. We updated the column on the affected rows to NULLS and altered the column to a VARCHAR(20) When I attempted to run the ALTER TABLE SWITCH I encountered the error Msg 4947, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 ALTER TABLE SWITCH statement failed. There is no identical index in source table 'LocalDeltanet.dbo.testresultsjoe' for the index 'PKIDX_testSummary' in target table 'LocalDeltanet.dbo.testresults_part'. After a lot of grief and testing I determined that the message was bogus and the real issue is that the 'sys.tables' still has €ślob_data_space_id€? with a value of 1 for this table. I created a copy of the table with the text column altered to varchar and one with just the varchar to begin with. After copying data from the original table, I tried to run the alter switch. It failed once again for the text column altered to varchar table, but it worked for the varchar from the start.
Since it appears that this value is causing my issues, is there anyway to update the table in place. I know I can BCP the data out, but that would take too long and would defeat the advantage of using the alter switch method.
BOL States:
The allow updates option is still present in the sp_configure stored procedure, although its functionality is unavailable in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 (the setting has no effect). In SQL Server 2005, direct updates to the system tables are not supported. This means we cannot update the table manually.
Hi, We are in process of converting all of the data type of the fields from CHAR/VARCHAR/TEXT into NCHAR/NVARCHAR/NTEXT (DBCS). Having more than 900 store procedure its look like real pain to make modification in all of the SPs.
After failed to find any help from GOOGLE, I am posting this request. I am basically looking for any automated tool which are convert data type in SP based on the field of the table used in the SP. Or at least which can provide me some sort of list which can helpful for doing manual reactoring.
Hi All: I am new to Sql 2000 database,Now I'm planing to create a table in my databse,my table included below fields like this : PoNo(the length is 15 characters) ,Supplier Name(the length is 50 characters).etc but I don't how to select the datatype for them. should I select Char or VarChar ? which one is the best slection ? thans in advanced!