design question, number vs string datatype

Hello all:

I have a fairly simple situation. I have demographic data like this:

< 10,000
10,000 - 20,000
...
> 100,000

Along with other info like the individual's name, ssn etc. I would like to store this info in a table, but obviously I don't want to store the values above as strings. I'm planning to store them as number(2) in Oracle. That leaves 0-99 possible values for this field.

My question: Is this how others store this type of information? Do you leave the translation back from the db value to a range string up to the application code? Or do you store these translation values in another table like this:

income_trans table

id name

0	'< 10,000'
1	'10,000 - 20,000'
...
9	'90,000 - 100,000'
10	'> 100,000'

And then do a table lookup? I guess most queries will be how many people fall into each category, so the lookup would only have to be done once. Also, I believe bitmapped indexes would be appropriate for such a field correct? That is if the # of unique values was .01% or less.

Any comments?

Thanks,
Sean Received on Mon May 11 1998 - 15:43:47 CDT