>
> As for space, remember also that fields are compressed on disk.

However,

> the fields will - as you say - be transferred fully expanded. I

think

> IB/6.5 now transfers varchars more efficiently.
>
>
> Regards,
> Aage J.

This is true. According to Bill Todd in the Borland Interbase
Community article "New Features In InterBase 6.5"
(http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,28107,00.html)-

"Past versions of InterBase have transmitted VARCHAR fields from the
server to the client padded to their full length with spaces. This
could cause performance problems on slow or heavily loaded networks.
This behavior has been changed so that only the actual data in the
VARCHAR field is transmitted."