Have a table (SQL Server 2008) that the user wants to record a fixed 8 character string in. At first glance, a CHAR seems the obvious selection since this value (an 8 character ID, two alpha ...

SQL Server allows a maximum rowlength of 8060 bytes. If you don't need many more columns in the table, and you don't need to index the column (900 bytes is the max. indexable length), then there's ...