I believe the (16) is the size of offset pointer used to locate the text data elsewhere on the disk. They are all (16 bits)...Sybase does this as well and is an odd (ok it's stupid) notation. This is one of those things you need to adjust by hand when convert from one db to another.
Ed -----Original Message----- From: Ryan Stille [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 7:38 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: mysql@lists.mysql.com Subject: RE: Intelligent Converters product: MSSQL-to-MySQL > OK, you confused me. How can 16 be bigger than 16? For character-based > fields, the number in the parentheses shows the length of the field, > does it not? The first part, the "text" or "char" or "varchar" or ..., > tells the engine what kind of data a field will contain. > How can TEXT(16) hold more data than VARCHAR(16) ? I'm not sure how the (16) is used on a TEXT field. MS SQL has TEXT fields and VARCHAR fields. A VARCHAR(16) in MSSQL would be the same as a VARCHAR(16) in MySQL. But in my MSSQL database I have data with thousands of characters in a TEXT(16) field. -Ryan -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
