> The thing that scares me is that you should never use a column for two
> completely
> different things.

They don't!

>I would suggest
>
> FIELD_DATA_TYPE // English representation like VARCHAR or CLOB
> FIELD_INTERNAL_DATA_TYPE // Current numbering system
> FIELD_CHARACTER_SET // or whatever you would call it
> FIELD_BYTE_SIZE // size in bytes the database needs for internal

storage.

> FIELD_LENGTH // For characters
> FIELD_PRECISION // For number
> FIELD_SCALE // For numbers

FIELD_LENGTH now is the "byte size"
CHARACTER_LENGTH is the length in characters.

Your proposal is already done :-)

With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL & MS SQL
Server
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com