Re: Surrogate numeric keys versus natural character keys.

Sirs,

How can I know if I am posting in HTML or not?

I am sorry I dont contribute to the main thread of conversation.

Regards
Karen Abgarian

Alan Byrne wrote:

> Hi Sybrand,
> sorry about posting in HTML, it's been a long time since I used UseNet
> and I had no idea that Navigator would post in HTML.
>
> In my example I am specifically interested in cases where the cust_num
> is NOT only numeric, I should have made that clearer in my example.So,
> let's day the cust_num is not only alphanumeric, but is also always 30
> characters long, and the table needs to be able to hold 10mil rows (so a
> 16-bit number would do the trick), surely there is then a performance
> benefit switching to a numeric key? A join comparison on a 16-bit number
> is sure to be faster than a comparison on a 30-character string, or am I
> missing something here?
>
> > IMO the comparison semantics in numbers are far more efficient than
> the comparison semantics for strings.
>
> The "comparison semantics"? What do you mean by this?
>
> How do I find out what system Oracle is using for it's character set?
> And how do I find out the size per character?
> Is there a web page that covers this sort of thing?
>
> Thanks for all the help,
> Alan.
Received on Thu Aug 10 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT