> Now of course Oracle and some other vendors I don't care to mention > love straying from the path and taking their own approach, but then > call themselves SQL ## compliant. Oracle has a major trailing space > problem that was discussed up and down this list many times. Peter, > just look at the archives. But I think following the standard is > the way to go.
Ahem... The VARCHAR2 datatype does NOT appear in the SQL standard. Oracle knows, and clearly states somewhere in the docs, that its implementation of the VARCHAR datatype tries to match the standard, and that they like VARCHAR2 better, so it's in there as well. Now, whether or not you and I agree about the desirability or correctness of this behavior, we still know that if we're trying to match the spec and be multi-dbms-portable, use VARCHAR. It should contain no surprises. or, use VARCHAR2, read its behaviors carefully, and plan for them... again reducing surprise. $.02 L8r, Rob #!/usr/bin/perl -w use Disclaimer qw/:standard/;
