Tables with VARCHAR

Jevgeni Astanovski <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.lang.as400.c
Message-ID <CAJuVQr3XW6NfX8Lm+NqoWP=oJv+UVgkHBG1qGTGLgJskq9P7gw@mail.gmail.com>
Hi,
Does anyone here know if switching from CHAR to VARCHAR gives any positive
effect in terms of table size?
Explain the situation briefly.
I've got an application written on ILE/C that works with rather big table
(historical data since 1996). Currently the table size is 260M records and
PF size 170GB.
The record size is app. 650 bytes and it has some pretty large char fields,
that can be either empty or almost empty :-)

Technically I can make a new table with VARCHARs and rewrite my program to
use VARCHAR instead of CHAR, but shall it reduce the table size?

Somehow I suspect that it will only increase the table...

TIA and regards,
Jevgeni.
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