Antiquated Software

[Fairlight]

In the relative spacial/temporal region of
Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 11:31:15AM -0500, Jay Ashworth achieved the spontaneous
generation of the following:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2006 at 12:44:13AM -0500, Fairlight wrote:
> > You'll never BELIEVE what Jay Ashworth said here...:
> > > > Actually, I have converted all of my Filepro files to another modern data 
> > > > base and they are smalleer then Filepro's
> > > 
> > > I'd be exceedingly surprised.
> > 
> > I wouldn't.  Using varchar as opposed to fixed-width fields, especially on
> > large fields, I'd -expect- a size decrease.  
> > 
> > Why wouldn't you expect the same?
> 
> Hmmm.  Wasn't thinking about that.  Depends on how many large character
> fields you *have* in your tables, I guess.

And how many records you have by which to multiply the difference.

When I designed FairPay, PayPal's specs had a fair amount of 128 and 254
length fields that actual data would probably hardly ever kick up to that
length.  Even some of the 64's and 40's were dubious.  Those were max
limits.  I used varchar on every platform that supports it.

Also from experience, you know I use databases for things that are more
system-oriented than strictly numbers and words.  So I will have databases
where I have pathnames for images or file related to something.  I always
use the "usual" default for MAXPATHLEN, which is 256...at least on 32-bit
platforms.  That's only reasonable, as you match the filesystem's limit and
never get burned.  It's also horribly wasteful in fP when many paths aren't
even 100.  Given a single variable-width field in a table, depending on how
many -records- you have, you could save a -bunch- of space, even though
it's only based on one -field- worth of savings.  Have to look at
percentage of average savings across the whole record.

mark->