Question

When developing an app that uses ODP .NET in DAL it’s very annoying always set the Size property of OracleParameter. For instance:

getSPTimeCommand.Parameters.Add("pStartTime", OracleDbType.Varchar2, ParameterDirection.Output).size = 200;

Isn’t was so ugly? Thinking about auto set the Size parameter of OracleParameter I thought about it influence on performance or memory consuming. What is that influence? What is your scenario for setting a Size?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

From the documentation:

Specifies the maximum size, in bytes or characters, of the data
transmitted to or from the database. For PL/SQL Associative Array
Bind, Size specifies the maximum number of elements in PL/SQL
Associative Array.

In your case it is the maximum size of the varchar2 you’re passing to the database.