Thank you Anne, for your succinct comments regarding the differences between the efficiencies of a CHAR and VARCHAR field definitions.

Human observation cannot actually elicit any observable effects between the two. 

However, internally, the CHAR field definition is more efficient as the database does not have to perform any field size calculations at the moment that data is being updated to a VARCHAR field.  Again, this is not noticeable to a user unless the data that is being updated into a VARCHAR field is quite large.

Steve Naidamast

Sr. Software Engineer