DW> If your application is COBOL-based, using CHAR DW> simplifies things quite a bit.
True enough. I'd forgotten about COBOL. The semantics of COBOL's PIC X fields match up pretty closely (exactly?) to SQL CHAR fields. DW> My understanding is that VARCHAR2 is not even a SQL standard The keyword VARCHAR2 is not in the standard, but a variable-length type is. I think the standard uses CHARACTER VARYING, or something like that. I don't have time to look it up right now. DB2 uses VARCHAR, without the "2". I'm not sure why Oracle is so outspoken against that same keyword. I'd be interested in finding out. Best regards, Jonathan Gennick --- Brighten the corner where you are http://Gennick.com * 906.387.1698 * mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Join the Oracle-article list and receive one article on Oracle technologies per month by email. To join, visit http://four.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/oracle-article, or send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and include the word "subscribe" in either the subject or body. -- Please see the official ORACLE-L FAQ: http://www.orafaq.net -- Author: Jonathan Gennick INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fat City Network Services -- 858-538-5051 http://www.fatcity.com San Diego, California -- Mailing list and web hosting services --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB ORACLE-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).
