Jim Lawrence (AccessD)
accessd at shaw.ca
Mon May 24 21:37:19 CDT 2004
The way the government office that I am working in does. My name is JimLawre That about sums it up. Jim -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of John W. Colby Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 6:16 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: RE: [AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various >First of all, it wouldn't blow up (like other apps I've heard mentioned today), it would gracefully limit the size. uhhh... how do you "gracefully" limit the size of another person's name? John W. Col uhh.... damnit! ;-) John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Brett Barabash Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 4:35 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: RE: [AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various >Ridiculously long? It takes no more room in the db. How is 255 >ridiculously long? Just curious. Do you set all of your fields to 50, by >default? I thought that we had already established the whole database size thing. Allow me to clarify: I do not limit field sizes to save space in the database. I am aware that smaller field length limits do not mean a smaller database. Field size limits are part of data validation. Nothing more, nothing less. Do I set my fields to 50 by default? Of course not, that makes about as much sense as setting them to 255. I set them to the appropriate length for the anticipated data. Let's take a first name for example: Is it reasonable to expect a 255 character first name? No. That would be, uh, RIDICULOUS (thus my comment). 50 would be more than enough. How about 35? Likely, yes. I can already hear the voices of outrage now. "What if you someone has a 36 character first name? Your system would blow up. Wouldn't it just be easier to allow 50 and avoid this possibility?" First of all, it wouldn't blow up (like other apps I've heard mentioned today), it would gracefully limit the size. More importantly, my reports have been designed to meet this design tolerance. If I allowed 50 characters when 35 is more than ample, I would need to rework my reports to allow the larger fields. "Why don't you just truncate the field on the report?" is the next question, to which I say "Because the user thinks that what they just entered is OK, and it clearly isn't". If they can see that the system doesn't allow a 36 character name, they are aware of the limitation, as opposed to the surprises down the road when their output gets clipped. -----Original Message----- From: DWUTKA at marlow.com [mailto:DWUTKA at marlow.com] Sent: Monday, May 24, 2004 2:37 PM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: RE: [AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various "if your chief reason for choosing ridiculously long field sizes" -- _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com