Thanks for the useful responses! Assume I have two fields => "stFixed CHAR(10)" and "stVar VARCHAR(8191) CHARACTER SET UTF8" --- what is the optimum pageSize?
``````````````````````` On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 6:17 AM Ann Harrison aharri...@ibphoenix.com [firebird-support] <firebird-support@yahoogroups.com> wrote: > > > > > > On Nov 12, 2019, at 10:44 PM, Richard Damon rich...@damon-family.org > [firebird-support] <firebird-support@yahoogroups.com> wrote: > > > >> On 11/12/19 12:38 PM, cte...@gmail.com [firebird-support] wrote: > >> > >> > >> What are the trade-offs of CHAR vs. VARCHAR? I know that VARCHAR > >> consumes less space. Anything thing else (are VARCHAR searches slower)? > >> > > In some implementations of SQL (I don't know if firebird is one of > > them), a row without any variable length items (like VARCHAR) and thus > > of fixed length could be stored in a somewhat optimized way making its > > access somewhat faster because all the records were the same size. > > In Firebird all records are compressed on disk. > > > > VARCHAR also doesn't always take less space, as very short CHAR fields > > can be smaller than the overhead of a VARCHAR, and if the CHAR field is > > storing a value that is always the same length (like maybe a hash code) > > the overhead of VARCHAR is just wasted. > > > > -- > > Richard Damon > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------ > > Posted by: Richard Damon <rich...@damon-family.org> > > ------------------------------------ > > > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > > > Visit http://www.firebirdsql.org and click the Documentation item > > on the main (top) menu. Try FAQ and other links from the left-side menu > there. > > > > Also search the knowledgebases at > http://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/ > > > > ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ > > ------------------------------------ > > > > Yahoo Groups Links > > > > > > > >
