At 07:32 AM 8/15/2006 -0500, Stephen the Cook wrote:
>>> Heh, I didn't say I designed it. I cannot take any credit for >>> anything = you are seeing with varchar involved. <g> >> but varchar is a *good* thing, isn't it? Oh wait...are you saying >> it's better optimized as fixed length chars? Do elaborate. > > From a very general Computer Science perspective, data storage of > 'variable' length fields and records requires more "work" from the DB
...
> Of course, the DB Vendors are constantly trying to improve their > performance. So they've come up with smart 'caching' and other
...
If you say so. VFP is case sensitive in searching.
Well, it does depend on how you build your index/search expression eh? But I know what you mean - the SQL DBs have a ... um... what is it? Character Set definition which you can define fields as being case-sensitive or not? That's one of the optimizations I talked about.
Also the article you linked talks about 'data page' design of SQL DBs. As I recall, that 'page' concept was thought up because of variable length fields/records (back in IBM and Oracle's early days). With fixed length fields/records, you don't need a 'page' concept because it's trivial to determine what parts of the data get locked. So, it does seem logical that if a SQL DB is based on 'page locking', varchar could work better than fixed char under certain conditions. Especially if the SQL DB uses a single access mechanism to get to the data.
-Charlie
_______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
