Sunday, September 21, 2008

Phone numbers

I was asked to create a script to update all phone numbers in the DB to reflect the new changes but guess what?????????????
the phone number field accepts only 7 digits!! wow
and the area code is used for the international codes ... interesting
and thats it, no other fields. (yes one more for the extention)
I wonder how are other institutions in the world dealing with this? is 7 enough???

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6 comments:

doona said...

there has to be a way around it, right?

Nemo said...

we'll have to figure it out :s
hmmm bs its really strange that no one thought about it before ... PLANNING?

Aurous said...

and they didn't think about this before now?!

Nemo said...

aurous: they didn't!! I have never thought about this before :S weird i know ...

I will prepare the script and wait for the DBA's decision on whether we'll go expanding for the field or not ...

MBH said...

Why not take a dump of the DB, a dump of the column, ake the DB offline (to prevent people from changing data), delete the existing column, make a new column with the required number of digits, insert data, rebuild index?

Nemo said...

mbh:
hmm actually today the DBA has altered the column in the pre-prod database and it worked fine ....
he will do it again for prod ... i didnt see him to ask for details

...

my job now is to prepare the conversion script ...