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From: "Bayless Kirtley" <bkirt@cox.net>
To: "Derby Discussion" <derby-user@db.apache.org>
References: <20061207140718.70677.qmail@web31903.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Best choice for column's data type to represent boolean data
Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 09:20:07 -0600
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Is there reason to think the next version may support Boolean data type?
If so then what about Java Objects?

Bayless


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Leslie Software" <lesliesoftware@yahoo.com>
To: "Derby Discussion" <derby-user@db.apache.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 8:07 AM
Subject: Re: Best choice for column's data type to represent boolean data


Thanks for the advice I was leaning towards the numeric solution but using 
'T' / 'F' as a visual clue makes a lot of sense.  After all until we do have 
a new boolean data type that visual clue is all we have.  I am already 
looking forward to the next version:-)

Ian

----- Original Message ----
From: "derby@segel.com" <derby@segel.com>

Well the best practice would be to extend the known data types to include a
Boolean. ;-)

There are two options.
You can create a CHAR(1) column, or if the database you could do a
byte/short column as well.

If you use a CHAR(1) you could represent the Boolean as either ('T' or 'F')
or ('Y','N'). You would also want to put a check constraint on the column
only allowing a true and a false value.

You could also use a 1 or a 0 in the column as well and provide the same
check constraint, however using a T/F or Y/N provides a visual cue that
would be missing from a numeric solution.

HTH

-G


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