Increase in Column Size

[oramad]

Hello,

We have two databases one with UTF8 character set and the other with US7ASCII character set. The schemas across these two databases are identical. The UTF8 database is serving our European customers and US7ASCII database is serving our US customers. As UTF8 is a multibyte character set and requires more space(2 bytes instead of 1 bytes) for storing certain characters certain columns need to be increased with factor 100%-200%.

As both the DB's(US7ASCII and UTF8) are using identical schemas will it be a good idea to change the field length on both the DB's for consistency reasons.

Are there are implications in doing this? Also is there any white paper on this scnario?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in Advance.

[Mr.Hanky]

Well, from my point of view it depends on how they are related. Are they linked?
Do you do import/export from one to the other?

If they are related then for consistancy keep them the same to avoid problems in the future.

MH

[oramad]

Hello,

No they are not related in any way. These DB's are two different entities and no data transformation or exp/imp is performed between them. What kind of overhead will be there when a specific column size is increased?

Thanks in Advance.