We are planning to create a new Column : is_Active in our new table which says whether record is active or not .The values are 'Y' for active , 'N' for inactive and null when nothing is selected.
we got some suggestion for creating the column with number datatype instead of varchar2 , where 1 for active , 0 for inactive and null .
The reason being that the varchar column needs to be set to lower case or upper case in the code (procedure/package/javacalls etc )to be consistent and the same problem will not arise with number datatype.
My question is whether the suggestion of going with number datatype is good approach ? (I feel that it becomes difficult for others to understand )
Pls suggest.