Getting around to setting up 8.2 in my system and I noticed that a lot of the columns in these tables which were previously defined with fixed widths are now memo/varchar(max). For example, in wwSession, browser and ip(?). In wwRequestLog, querystr, verb(?), remoteaddr, browser, referrer. As I'm using SQL I just want to make sure I'm not misinterpreting something. Also, can you confirm that the wws_id table is deprecated?

Thanks.

The wws_id table is used by wwBusinessObject to generate new Integer Pks by default. You can override that behavior in the subclasses and use auto-generated keys or some other mechanism. You can get rid of it if you don't use wwBusinessObject in its default setup.

The idea behind this was to generate unique ids by checking the table for the last value and increasing, without relying on auto-increment, which has limitations when creating complex objects with child objects that you're saving and you need parent primary keys for foreign key assignments before the data is saved. Personally I no longer use int keys - either unique strings or guids which work much more reliably for distributed scenarios, even if they take up more space and are less efficient to look up.

The varchar changes avoid fixed field widths that get padded with spaces by FoxPro along with the wasted space that incurs.

+++ Rick ---

Thanks, Rick. I don't currently use wwBusinessObject so I shall make it go away.

The one shortcoming I can think of to using GUIDs or unique strings is they are not sequential and that can have some impact on deletion strategies/performance. IAC thanks for the info. Much appreciated as always.