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amalshah71
Starting Member
9 Posts |
 Posted - 2006-12-11 : 21:13:24
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| i have a employee table with various columns....here i have emp_code as my primary keynow my concern is which data type is to be associated with the primary key(emp_code)emp_code int not null, ORemp_code varchar not null,wht i understand is to go for the simpler one....i.e. int, since it would be easy to deal with int data now my basic question here is while creating tables which data type is to be assigned to emp_code (int or varchar) and on wht basis.......since both is possible...help appreciatedcheers |
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Jeff Moden
Aged Yak Warrior
652 Posts |
Posted - 2006-12-11 : 21:32:18
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| If you are going to use numbers for the Emp_Code, why wouldn't you use INT? INT takes 4 bytes to store numbers from about minus two billion to about plus two billion. That's 4 bytes to store the equivelent of 10 characters max. VARCHAR takes 1 byte per character plus two bytes to hold the length. Since the length is dynamically allocated, it will always be slower than INT which has a fixed length. And, you can't make a VARCHAR column auto-numbering like you can INT.--Jeff Moden |
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primary key data type