I have a person table that will have columns such as first name and last name.
What is the best data type to use for these columns as they can be any length. Is there a rule of thumb when it comes to this?
I am using sql server 2008.
-
Falsehoods programmers believe about namesDamien_The_Unbeliever– Damien_The_Unbeliever2012-12-28 12:59:10 +00:00Commented Dec 28, 2012 at 12:59
Add a comment
|
4 Answers
I think it is highly unlikely someone to have a Firstname or Lastname more than 50 characters. Datatype for string type with Unicode characters is NVARCHAR and you can limit both of them to 50 or even 100 would not make a much difference.
So you can say
Firstname nvarchar(50)
Lastname nvarchar(50)
1 Comment
Wesley Skeen
Thanks for this. Its as i thought. There's no magic datatype that auto expands as needed. This is my accepted answer
Use NVARCHAR(N), where N is the largest number of characters you wish to support for the field.
If you expect that you will never have international names (say Chinese, Japanese, Hebrew and other scripts) than you can use VARCHAR(N).
These are variable length fields that are suitable for string data of variable length.
Comments
You can use Varchar(50) data type and devide full name in to first name, middle name and l
Comments
If any lenght can acceed 4000 for NVarchar or 8000 for Varchar you could use (N)Varchar(max). But if this would be unlike you should prefer (N)Varchar(Yourlimit) because of perfomance issues.
