Best practices for field sizes

Can any one direct me to sources for best practices of field types and sizes
to use for commonly used information such as address, names, city, business
names ...

Thanks, BrianThe maximums you need actually vary depending on country, industry sector,
etc. There's no perfect number ofr any field, so you'll ahve to figure it out
on a case-by-case basis.

Most databases including Access don't usually use up space for all the
characters in a string, just the ones that are actually used. Because of
this, the only reason for ever using a field size smaller than the maximum of
255 is as a data entry sanity check or to discourage people form adding extra
information to the field that actually belongs elsewhere. Sometimes, it's
better to do that check in the application forms, and warn the user without
preventing them from entering the longer value if they insist it's right.

You can usually get a good idea how big a field should be by taking the
biggest value you can find, and multiplying by about 1.66.

On Sun, 27 Feb 2005 20:17:10 -0600, "Brian" <brianh@.advantexmail.net> wrote:

>Can any one direct me to sources for best practices of field types and sizes
>to use for commonly used information such as address, names, city, business
>names ...
>Thanks, Brian|||"Brian" <brianh@.advantexmail.net> wrote in message
news:1124vsnj59p5q9a@.corp.supernews.com...
> Can any one direct me to sources for best practices of field types and
> sizes
> to use for commonly used information such as address, names, city,
> business
> names ...
> Thanks, Brian

If you intend to use the addresses for mailings - I would refer to the USPS
guidelines and standards, and work backwards to set your address fields.

As for names, I try and keep them fairly short (40 chars) and seperate them
into parts (Title, First, Middle, Last and Suffix), but thats just me. Even
if you have big fields, it won't all get displayed in a window envelope.|||Go to your industry standards.

For example, the USPS uses 35 characrter per address line to fit into a
5-line 3.5 inch mailing label.