Re: char() or varchar() for frequently used column

On Thu, 2002-10-17 at 22:23, Jules Alberts wrote:
>
> I have considered this. As a matter of fact, that is the way it is in
> our current db but I'm not really happy with it. Theoretically CODE
> should never change and is therefore safe to use as primary key. But
> having an "extra" serial primary key will make the db more flexible
> regarding to unforeseen complications.

Yeah, this happens.  Later people want to expire particular codes, or
change their meaning, but not for the existing records that refer to
them...

From my own experience, I would also say that there is value in being
able to sequence the codes in a non-alphabetic order.  I add another
"seq" column to such tables, to allow their ordering to be arbitrarily
adjusted as well.

Cheers,
                    Andrew.
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