[AccessD] [Spam] Re: Why Change Field Size/was Change Field Size

John Colby jwcolby at ColbyConsulting.com
Mon Dec 5 17:43:00 CST 2005


I just ran into a field the other day.  PolicyID, guaranteed to NEVER be
more than 10 characters, so the field was set to 10 characters (by the
previous programmer).  

Guess what?  We finally (3 years later) got a policed that was waaaay more
than 10 characters.  Of course the entire policy record could not go in,
which prevented the claim from being processed.  All users must get out of
the database so that I can open up the field (to 255 characters of course). 

I don't care WHAT the business rule is, text data can and will change.  SSN
is a good example.  It is guaranteed to be XXX-XX-XXXX except that they are
running out of SSNs (50 years later) and guess what is going to change in
the next few years...

Length types of rules are not the thing (IMHO) that should be enforced at
the DB level.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

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-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Charlotte Foust
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 6:16 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: [Spam] Re: [AccessD] Why Change Field Size/was Change Field Size

I do go on, and I'll keep going on. ;-}  If you don't know what the field
will be used for, why include it at all?  Yes, fields like address may very
well need to be 255 because they *are* a variable length.  You know
perfectly well that I was talking about simply defaulting all fields to 255,
not about allowing specific fields to be that length for a purpose.  

I'm not the only one who does go on ....

Charlotte Foust


-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of William Hindman
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 11:36 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Why Change Field Size/was Change Field Size


"that it's sloppy programming and suggests that you haven't really thought
out the design of the table." Charlotte

...lol ...how you do go on! ...if I'm absolutely certain of the field's
content then I'll size it appropriately and validate the data ...and my
table design tends toward a high degree of normalization so that I'm not

overly concerned about record size, although it is a legitmate consideration
...but, and this is where we may differ, if I have name, address, et al type
fields where the data length is unknown, I prefer to default them to 255

rather than establishing artificial limitations for the very reason that

Rocky is running into ...if the guesstimate turns out to be wrong it can be
a rpita to fix once in distribution.

...the only problem I've seen so far is the client using tabs within the

field and I now routinely prevent that.

Willam
<snip>
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