Re: Converting strings to ASCII codes to increase search

From: Ed Prochak <edprochak_at_gmail.com>
Date: 19 Feb 2007 10:22:55 -0800
Message-ID: <1171909375.290196.144420@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>

On Feb 19, 6:47 am, 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

What kind of search are you having difficulty with? looking up names that might be in Mixed cAsE? various forms of LIKE queries, but especially ones that start with the wildcard? (e.g ...LIKE '%SKI'...) ?

My mantra on performance issues is: know thy data. Ed Received on Mon Feb 19 2007 - 12:22:55 CST