Re: Converting Strings to ASCII codes to increase search performance

From: Frank van Bortel <frank.van.bortel_at_gmail.com>
Date: 19 Feb 2007 05:07:24 -0800
Message-ID: <1171890443.090997.290280@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com>

On 19 feb, 12:53, "spacedog" <s1m0nc..._at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> We have a system that contains 50M customer records. We need to
> repeatedly search this table to see if the new customer is actually a
> new customer or has been a customer of ours in the past.
> Some of the development guys have come up with the idea of converting
> some of the fields to their ASCII code representation as they think
> this will be quicker that doing straight string comparisons.
> I have been trying to do some research around this and can't find
> anything that supports this.
> Has anyone come across this in the past or have any ideas.
>
> Thanks
> Simon

Probably the myth, that searches on numeric fields would be faster than on character fields.

Anyway - do whatever you want, but test it, measure it, and look at it again. Only if you find proof, based on numbers, implement your solution. Received on Mon Feb 19 2007 - 07:07:24 CST