Hi All,

Yesterday I posted a OT node to SoPW. This was the wrong
place to post such a node so it was rightfully deleted.
But I want to get everyones' opinnion about the wisdom
of declaring a Oracle column to represent SSN as varchar2(9).

Example:

create table OMG_BTW (
...
SSN varchar2(9),
...
);
[download]

What happens if there is ever more that 999,999,999 people
with SSNs?

Would it be better to create the table like so ...

create table OMG_BTW (
...
SSN NUMBER,
...
);
[download]

... or am just a worry wort that hasn't forgotten the nightmare
of Y2K bugs. I guess it is important to know the current
population of the US which is 287,773,061
with the world population of 6,243,392,791 at the time of
this posting.
What I don't know is the rate at which the population is growing?
And what is better varchar2(9) or number?

Monks! Your country needs you please help!