From: Robins Tharakan <tharakan@gmail.com>
To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Varchar pkey instead of integer
Date: Wed, 21 May 2008 11:10:43 +0530
Message-ID: <36af4bed0805202240v5fbdd6bcv75643a6488cd1daf@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
Hi,
I am currently designing a database and wanted to know something that may
sound trivial, but I thought its still good to confirm before dumping
millions of rows in it.
The design requires a few master tables with very limited rows, for e.g.
currency_denomination table could at the max have a few records like million
/ billion / crore (used in india) / lacs (india specific) and so on.
Now what I wanted to ask was whether its any different to have the
primary-keys in such master tables as text/varchar rather than integer ?
i.e. Can I use a character varying(10) and use the text 'million' /
'billion' instead of a serial / integer type ?
p.s.: I am not as much concerned with the size that it'd take on the data
tables, as much as the fact that the select / insert performances shouldn't
suffer. However, if that increase in size (per data record) may make a
considerable impact on the performance, I would certainly want to take that
into account during design phase.
Any pointers / replies appreciated.
Regards,
*Robins Tharakan*
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Cc: tharakan@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Varchar pkey instead of integer
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