[AccessD] Field Sizes

I "was" kidding when I said to make them all varcahr(8000). I tend to use
50.

I prefer Varchars to chars, unless when dealing with a specific charcter
length datatypes.

Char's tend to pad the vales with spaces. So if you have a field titled
fname,

a varchar(50) would store the name Joe as "Joe"
a char(50) would store the name Joe as "Joe
"

I tend to sometimes forget to RTRIM() my chars when selecting :(

D
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of John Bartow
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 10:01 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] Field Sizes


On that note, is it good advice to make all text fields VarCHar in SQL
Server?

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of
dmcafee at pacbell.net

In SQL you can make everything a VARCHAR(8000)

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of John Bartow

Q: Does it matter when upsizing to SQL Server?

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Stuart McLachlan

255 characters.

Access doesn't use fixed length storage for strings and you don't save any
space by defining text fields as less than the maximum allowable.  I change
the default field size for text strings to 255 in Options and never change
it for individual filed definitions.

All that restricting field sizes does for you is increase the risk of
truncating data or throwing up error messages at the user sometime in the
future.

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