Varchar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Variable Character Field (or varchar) is a set of character data of indeterminate length.
The term varchar specifically refers to a data type of a field (or column) in a database management system. Varchar fields can be of any size up to the limit. The limit differs from types of databases, an Oracle 9i Database for instance the maximum field length is 4000 bytes while Microsoft SQL Server 2005 has a maximum of 8000 bytes.
varchar data types are popular amongst all database management systems (DBMS). This is mostly because, unlike the char data-type, varchar does not store any blank characters, reducing the size a database increases when not the full length of the field is used. Making the database faster and cost efficient.
[edit] References
CHAR and VARCHAR documentation for Transact-SQL at MSDN.
