Meaning of varchar | Babel Free

Definitions

A text field of indeterminate length in a database, as opposed to the traditional fixed-length field.

Examples

“Be aware that varchars will in general provide slower updates but faster selects. By definition, the amount of storage they use is variable.”

“With a varchar, the storage is always the actual number of characters you have stored plus 2 bytes. So a varchar(20) with a 5-character word will take up 7 bytes, with the extra 2 bytes holding a size reference for SQL Server.”

CEFR level