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eschoof
Starting Member
4 Posts |
 Posted - 2003-11-06 : 22:08:46
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| I am designing a table that could potentially have a field that stores a VERY long string (in upwards of several thousand characters). Is there an efficient way to do this, while also maintaining good performance? I suppose that I should also mention that most of the entries will be short, but a few will be long.Thanks in advance!-Eric |
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Merkin
Funky Drop Bear Fearing SQL Dude!
4970 Posts |
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eschoof
Starting Member
4 Posts |
Posted - 2003-11-06 : 22:34:53
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| Well, say I go with a varchar of 8000 bytes. Does this always make the field 8000 bytes, or is that just the maximum it can hold? I don't want my database to get huge really fast, especially if it really isn't holding that much data.-Eric |
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Merkin
Funky Drop Bear Fearing SQL Dude!
4970 Posts |
Posted - 2003-11-06 : 22:47:32
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| A varchar field resizes itself. So if you were to have a varchar(8000) it will only be that size if you fill it that much.BUTYour row (if you don't include the Text datatype) can hold 8k. That's 8K per record.If you try to insert more than that, your insert will fail.So, although you can declare a table like :Create Table MyTable(recordID int,recordDesc varchar(500),recordBody varchar(8000))It will fail if you push more than 8K into a record.So, this would work :INSERT INTO MyTable (recordID, recordDesc, recordBody)VALUES (1, 'blah', 'blah')but if you did an insert that pushed each of those varchar's to their limit it would fail.Make sense ?Damian |
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eschoof
Starting Member
4 Posts |
Posted - 2003-11-06 : 22:49:56
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| Yep!Thanks so much for your help.I'm just now beginning with SQL. I've been reading lots of books, and lots of websites on the subject. Man, there is a LOT out there, lol. I really appreciate all the help, especially since this is probably a FAQ.-Eric |
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Merkin
Funky Drop Bear Fearing SQL Dude!
4970 Posts |
Posted - 2003-11-06 : 23:05:41
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No probs.Stick around here, you'll be an expert in no time  Damian |
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Large field question