Subject: time types and indexes

From: John Peter Lee <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 15:09:34 -0500 (EST)

Hi:

  Some more questions on time types:

  Can the time types have indexes made on them ? I guess I'd like to
  know what the internal storage is like - I've had a look through the
  source, but can't seem to find where this info might be :-(
  My data has this temporal element which will be a very important
  key index, among a few others, and I'd like to be sure that Postgres can
  construct an index on the string abstime that is stored in the DB. 
  Does it build on the string, or does Postgres end up storing the date as
  integer data ???

  Also, I'm wondering of whether to use the time types at all, because if
  I change to another DBMS, the interface to time probably will have to
  change. I know I'd have to reload the data into their format, but I'd
  like the application that retrieves the time typed data to not have to
  be changed. Am I safe in assuming that the time type interface is NOT any
  kind of standard ?

  Lastly, is there a limit to the number of indexes that can be constructed
  for a data set ? Each record has ~50 attributes, and I would like to
  build indexes for about 7 of them. I've got about 55,000 records total.

  thanks in advance...

  jp

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JP Lee               Institute for Visualization and Perception Research	
[email-masked]                    University of Massachusetts at Lowell 
(508) 934-3384			      1 University Ave. Lowell, MA 01854

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From: avi pfeffer <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 12:23:37 -0800

>   Can the time types have indexes made on them ?

Yes.

>   Does it build on the string, or does Postgres end up storing the date as

Integer data.

>   Am I safe in assuming that the time type interface is NOT any
>   kind of standard ?

Yes.

>   for a data set ? 

Not as far as I know.