Multiple choice technology databases

A column in a table, having millions of rows, contains the name of States in India. It is defined as CHAR(50). What performance improvements can be made with respect to the data type?

  1. Change it to CHAR(10)

  2. Change it to VARCHAR(50)

  3. Change it to NVARCHAR(50)

  4. Change it to CHAR(100)
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B Correct answer
Explanation

VARCHAR(50) is more efficient than CHAR(50) for state names because VARCHAR only uses storage space equal to the actual length of the data, while CHAR always allocates the full 50 bytes regardless of content length. For variable-length data like state names, VARCHAR reduces storage and improves cache efficiency. CHAR(10) is insufficient (some state names exceed 10 characters). NVARCHAR adds Unicode overhead unnecessarily for plain text. CHAR(100) wastes even more space.

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