Best practices for SQL varchar column length

Question

Every time is set up a new SQL table or add a new varchar column to an existing table  I am wondering one thing  what is the best value for the length    So  lets say  you have a column called name of type varchar  So  you have to choose the length  I cannot think of a name   20 chars  but you will never know  But instead of using 20  I always round up to the next 2 n number  In this case  I would choose 32 as the length  I do that  because from an computer scientist point of view  a number 2 n looks more even to me than other numbers and I m just assuming that the architecture underneath can handle those numbers slightly better than others   On the other hand  MSSQL server for example  sets the default length value to 50  when you choose to create a varchar column  That makes me thinking about it  Why 50  is it just a random number  or based on average column length  or what   It could also be - or probably is - that different SQL servers implementations  like MySQL  MSSQL  Postgres       have different best column length values

User · Accepted Answer

No DBMS I know of has any  optimization  that will make a VARCHAR with a 2 n length perform better than one with a max length that is not a power of 2   I think early SQL Server versions actually treated a VARCHAR with length 255 differently than one with a higher maximum length  I don t know if this is still the case    For almost all DBMS  the actual storage that is required is only determined by the number of characters you put into it  not the max length you define  So from a storage point of view  and most probably a performance one as well   it does not make any difference whether you declare a column as VARCHAR 100  or VARCHAR 500     You should see the max length provided for a VARCHAR column as a kind of constraint  or business rule  rather than a technical physical thing   For PostgreSQL the best setup is to use text without a length restriction and a CHECK CONSTRAINT that limits the number of characters to whatever your business requires    If that requirement changes  altering the check constraint is much faster than altering the table  because the table does not need to be re-written   The same can be applied for Oracle and others - in Oracle it would be VARCHAR 4000  instead of text though    I don t know if there is a physical storage difference between VARCHAR max  and e g  VARCHAR 500  in SQL Server  But apparently there is a performance impact when using varchar max  as compared to varchar 8000     See this link  posted by Erwin Brandstetter as a comment   Edit 2013-09-22  Regarding bigown s comment    In Postgres versions before 9 2  which was not available when I wrote the initial answer  a change to the column definition did rewrite the whole table  see e g  here  Since 9 2 this is no longer the case and a quick test confirmed that increasing the column size for a table with 1 2 million rows indeed only took 0 5 seconds    For Oracle this seems to be true as well  judging by the time it takes to alter a big table s varchar column  But I could not find any reference for that   For MySQL the manual says  In most cases  ALTER TABLE makes a temporary copy of the original table   And my own tests confirm that  running an ALTER TABLE on a table with 1 2 million rows  the same as in my test with Postgres  to increase the size of a column took 1 5 minutes  In MySQL however you can not use the  workaround  to use a check constraint to limit the number of characters in a column   For SQL Server I could not find a clear statement on this but the execution time to increase the size of a varchar column  again the 1 2 million rows table from above  indicates that no rewrite takes place   Edit 2017-01-24  Seems I was  at least partially  wrong about SQL Server  See this answer from Aaron Bertrand that shows that the declared length of a nvarchar or varchar columns makes a huge difference for the performance

User · Answer

VARCHAR 255  and VARCHAR 2  take exactly the same amount of space on disk  So the only reason to limit it is if you have a specific need for it to be smaller  Otherwise make them all 255   Specifically  when doing sorting  larger column do take up more space  so if that hurts performance  then you need to worry about it and make them smaller  But if you only ever select 1 row from that table  then you can just make them all 255 and it won t matter   See  What are the optimum varchar sizes for MySQL

User · Answer

The best value is the one that is right for the data as defined in the underlying domain   For some domains  VARCHAR 10  is right for the Name attribute  for other domains VARCHAR 255  might be the best choice

User · Answer

In a sense you re right  although anything lower than 2 8 characters will still register as a byte of data    If you account for the base character that leaves anything with a VARCHAR  lt  255 as consuming the same amount of space   255 is a good baseline definition unless you particularly wish to curtail excessive input

User · Answer

Always check with your business domain expert  If that s you  look for an industry standard  If  for example  the domain in question is a natural person s family name  surname  then for a UK business I d go to the UK Govtalk data standards catalogue for person information and discover that a family name will be between 1 and 35 characters

User · Answer

Whenever I set up a new SQL table I feel the same way about 2 n being more  even     but to sum up the answers here  there is no significant impact on storage space simply by defining varchar 2 n  or even varchar MAX     That said  you should still anticipate the potential implications on storage and performance when setting a high varchar   limit  For example  let s say you create a varchar MAX  column to hold product descriptions with full-text indexing  If 99  of descriptions are only 500 characters long  and then suddenly you get somebody who replaces said descriptions with wikipedia articles  you may notice unanticipated significant storage and performance hits   Another thing to consider from Bill Karwin      There s one possible performance impact  in MySQL  temporary tables   and MEMORY tables store a VARCHAR column as a fixed-length column    padded out to its maximum length  If you design VARCHAR columns much   larger than the greatest size you need  you will consume more memory   than you have to  This affects cache efficiency  sorting speed  etc    Basically  just come up with reasonable business constraints and error on a slightly larger size  As  onedaywhen pointed out  family names in UK are usually between 1-35 characters  If you decide to make it varchar 64   you re not really going to hurt anything    unless you re storing this guy s family name that s said to be up to 666 characters long  In that case  maybe varchar 1028  makes more sense   And in case it s helpful  here s what varchar 2 5 through 2 10 might look like if filled    varchar 32      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet amet   varchar 64      Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipiscing elit  Donecie  varchar 128     Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipiscing elit  Donecie                 vestibulum massa  Nullam dignissim elementum molestie  Vehiculas  varchar 256     Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipiscing elit  Donecie                 vestibulum massa  Nullam dignissim elementum molestie  Vehiculas                 velit metus  sit amet tristique purus condimentum eleifend  Quis                 que mollis magna vel massa malesuada bibendum  Proinde tincidunt  varchar 512     Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipiscing elit  Donecie                 vestibulum massa  Nullam dignissim elementum molestie  Vehiculas                 velit metus  sit amet tristique purus condimentum eleifend  Quis                 que mollis magna vel massa malesuada bibendum  Proinde tincidunt                 dolor tellus  sit amet porta neque varius vitae  Seduse molestie                 lacus id lacinia tempus  Vestibulum accumsan facilisis lorem  et                 mollis diam pretium gravida  In facilisis vitae tortor id vulput                 ate  Proin ornare arcu in sollicitudin pharetra  Crasti molestie  varchar 1024    Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur adipiscing elit  Donecie                 vestibulum massa  Nullam dignissim elementum molestie  Vehiculas                 velit metus  sit amet tristique purus condimentum eleifend  Quis                 que mollis magna vel massa malesuada bibendum  Proinde tincidunt                 dolor tellus  sit amet porta neque varius vitae  Seduse molestie                 lacus id lacinia tempus  Vestibulum accumsan facilisis lorem  et                 mollis diam pretium gravida  In facilisis vitae tortor id vulput                 ate  Proin ornare arcu in sollicitudin pharetra  Crasti molestie                 dapibus leo lobortis eleifend  Vivamus vitae diam turpis  Vivamu                 nec tristique magna  vel tincidunt diam  Maecenas elementum semi                 quam  In ut est porttitor  sagittis nulla id  fermentum turpist                  Curabitur pretium nibh a imperdiet cursus  Sed at vulputate este                 proin fermentum pretium justo  ac malesuada eros et Pellentesque                 vulputate hendrerit molestie  Aenean imperdiet a enim at finibus                 fusce ut ullamcorper risus  a cursus massa  Nunc non dapibus vel                 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet  consectetur Praesent ut ultrices sit

User · Answer

Adding to a horse with no name s answer you might find the following of interest        it does not make any difference whether you declare a column as   VARCHAR 100  or VACHAR 500     -- try to create a table with max varchar length drop table if exists foo  create table foo name varchar 65535  not null engine innodb   MySQL Database Error  Row size too large   -- try to create a table with max varchar length - 2 bytes for the length drop table if exists foo  create table foo name varchar 65533  not null engine innodb   Executed Successfully  -- try to create a table with max varchar length with nullable field drop table if exists foo  create table foo name varchar 65533  engine innodb   MySQL Database Error  Row size too large   -- try to create a table with max varchar length with nullable field drop table if exists foo  create table foo name varchar 65532  engine innodb   Executed Successfully   Dont forget the length byte s  and the nullable byte so   name varchar 100  not null will be 1 byte  length    up to 100 chars  latin1   name varchar 500  not null will be 2 bytes  length    up to 500 chars  latin1   name varchar 65533  not null will be 2 bytes  length    up to 65533 chars  latin1   name varchar 65532  will be 2 bytes  length    up to 65532 chars  latin1    1 null byte  Hope this helps

User · Answer

I haven t checked this lately  but I know in the past with Oracle that the JDBC driver would reserve a chunk of memory during query execution to hold the result set coming back   The size of the memory chunk is dependent on the column definitions and the fetch size   So the length of the varchar2 columns affects how much memory is reserved   This caused serious performance issues for me years ago as we always used varchar2 4000   the max at the time  and garbage collection was much less efficient than it is today

[mysql] Best practices for SQL varchar column length

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