>>Can anyone give me an idea of performance degradation with the use of a varchar column vs a char column? I know that space-wise, varchar is better if the sizes vary a lot. But, I don't know what kind of performance hit I'll get from a varchar.
>>
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>Hi Bonnie,
>
>The one place where varchar data type can slow things down is UPDATE and only if new value causes row to be moved because there's not enough room on the page for in-place update. The queries would rather benefit from varchar data types because more rows could fit on one page so it'll require fewer physical reads which are more expensive that anything else.

Sergey;

Now that I fully understand! The other answer seemed to contradict itself and just added confusion to the issue. Besides, I have only had one cup of Green Tea this morning and I am not ready for deep thoughts! :)

Tom