CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sql-serversql-server-2008
Wesley Skeen
Wesley Skeen

Reputation: 8295

What datatype to use for a database column

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.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 7720

Answers (4)

bummi
bummi

Reputation: 27385

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.

Ref1 and Ref2

Upvotes: 1

Nirav Gajjar
Nirav Gajjar

Reputation: 21

You can use Varchar(50) data type and devide full name in to first name, middle name and l

Upvotes: 1

Kaf
Kaf

Reputation: 33839

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)

Upvotes: 5

Oded
Oded

Reputation: 499302

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.

Upvotes: 3

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