In most cases the compress option has given benefits for me. It has has helped not only in getting the storage reduced by 70 to 90% but also helped get performance gains when retrieving from huge datasets. It all depends on what the bottleneck is. Whether IO or CPU. On compress option Vs Varchar: The data sets created with say 100 records occupies 20 to 30% less space than the RDBMSes with Varchar option. So even if a varchar option is made available still the compress option might be valid. ... View more