Question

i am new to SQL and i have a small question. i am writing a table script and i have question about two fields in that table. Here is the Table structure :

Billing

CustomerName
CustomerPhone
BGFlag (Y/N)
UpdateIndicator (B=Before,A=After)

My question is, do i have to write script for (Y/N) in BGFlag and (B=Before,A=After)
in UpdateIndicator in the create table script. what i am thinking is i just have to create table with these column names and (Y/N), (B=Before,A=After) is the data for that two columns which i will get in sample file. Any suggestions?

Thanks

Answer 1

Sounds like that is just application-specific metadata about those columns. You could put that in extended properties of the table, but nobody except a curious DBA is going to see it.

Keep in mind, even if the data you are importing into your database uses Y/N and B/A, you can always transform that into a bit value (0/1), which seems a better idea from a field design perspective.

Or, if you literally want it to hold those text values (Y/N and B/A), then just use a CHAR(1) field. The risk, though, is that anyone could put any single-character text value in these columns.