Storing a great many fields in a database

[Bob Sneidar]

I think then that for SQLITE TEXT is actually synonymous with VARCHAR. It was my understanding that VARCHAR allowed for an economical use of space, but was slower to index. The engine would use just enough space, up to the limit set, to store the values, truncating the excess. I seem to remember that one of the string types (perhaps CHAR) always stored trailing spaces up to the limit, and this produced faster indexes. 

I could be wrong though as I am not terribly experienced in database stuff, being only a hobbyist. 

Bob


On Jul 16, 2012, at 11:08 AM, Andre Garzia wrote:

> Bob,
> 
> SQLite will always use TEXT and allocate just as much space as necessary to
> store the information at hand. I think it is a better option.
> 
> So if you just store 10 chars in that column, the TEXT field will use just
> that space and nothing more.
> 
> On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 2:58 PM, Bob Sneidar <bobs at twft.com> wrote:
> 
>> Wha?? I thought the whole point to using VARCHAR was that it only used as
>> much space as the actual text needed. What is the difference between TEXT
>> and VARCHAR then?
>> 
>> Bob