List of standard lengths for database fields

Question

I\'m designing a database table and once again asking myself the same stupid question: How long should the firstname field be?

Does anyone have a li

Answer 1

If you need to consider localisation (for those of us outside the US!) and it's possible in your environment, I'd suggest:

Define data types for each component of the name - NOTE: some cultures have more than two names! Then have a type for the full name,

Then localisation becomes simple (as far as names are concerned).

The same applies to addresses, BTW - different formats!