John W. Colby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Wed May 26 06:49:20 CDT 2004
>I'm the expert. No argument. >Quite often the client doesn't know what he/she needs. No argument. >If there would be a good reason to limit a text field to 53 chars, I would tell or simply apply it. No argument. IF THERE WERE GOOD REASON. >As some examples, ISO country codes are either two or three chars, BIC(SWIFT) codes are 8 or 11 chars, and IBAN codes are, by definition, max. 34 chars - anything above these numbers would represent an error and would make no sense to store. If you are not using a lookup table for this then you have issues. I will hand you this one I suppose, so lookup tables may in certain circumstances be limited. We are assuming here that we suspect the user will be writing books in the country code fields if we don't get out the handcuffs? >Here, no city name is longer than 20 chars and no street name is longer than 34 chars. Today. >Thus 50 is a reasonable limit for domestic address lines which, by the way, is also what Access's table designer suggests. Do I look impressed with what Access table designer suggests? John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Gustav Brock Sent: Wednesday, May 26, 2004 7:17 AM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] On DB Bloat, Bad DB Design, and various Hi John > I keep asking (and nobody is responding) - whose data is it? Whose database > is it. In most cases, the client's. > Who are YOU to TELL the client that 53 characters is all they need? I'm the expert. Quite often the client doesn't know what he/she needs. If there would be a good reason to limit a text field to 53 chars, I would tell or simply apply it. As some examples, ISO country codes are either two or three chars, BIC (SWIFT) codes are 8 or 11 chars, and IBAN codes are, by definition, max. 34 chars - anything above these numbers would represent an error and would make no sense to store. Here, no city name is longer than 20 chars and no street name is longer than 34 chars. Thus 50 is a reasonable limit for domestic address lines which, by the way, is also what Access's table designer suggests. /gustav -- _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com