DWUTKA at marlow.com
DWUTKA at marlow.com
Mon Dec 5 20:28:37 CST 2005
Is it me, or did the magnetic poles just shift? Something happened, JC and I agree on a development technique! ;) Drew -----Original Message----- From: John Colby [SMTP:jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 8:07 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: Why Change Field Size/was Change FieldS ize >Is this a changed stance for you? Nope, I've defaulted to 255 for as long as I can remember. John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause: http://folding.stanford.edu/ -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of DWUTKA at marlow.com Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 8:44 PM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: [Spam] Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: Why Change Field Size/was Change FieldS ize I concur. Is this a changed stance for you? I know I was on the 255 length stance the first time around. ;) Drew -----Original Message----- From: John Colby [SMTP:jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com] Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 5:43 PM To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving' Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: Why Change Field Size/was Change Field Size 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 -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com