Re: Performance: BigInt vs Decimal(19,0)

On Saturday, September 27, 2003, at 10:39 PM, Yusuf W. wrote:

> Now, I've got to convince my project's software
> architech, that a bigint would be better than a
> decimal.
>
> Does anyone know where I could get some documentation
> on how the int and decimal are implemented so I could
> prove to him that ints are better? Can people suggest
> good points to make in order to prove it?
>

Print out Tom's reply and give it to him. Saying 'one of the people who
develops the thing says so' ought to carry some weight. I would hope...

> Thanks in advance.
>
> --- Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> "Yusuf W." <unicef2k(at)yahoo(dot)com> writes:
>>> For the application that I'm working on, we want
>> to
>>> use data types that are database independent.
>> (most
>>> databases has decimal, but not big int).
>>
>> Most databases have bigint, I think.
>>
>>> Anyhow, we are planning on using decimal(19,0) for
>> our
>>> primary keys instead of a big int, would there be
>> a
>>> performance difference in using a bigint over
>> using decimals?
>>
>> You'll be taking a very large performance hit, for
>> very little benefit
>> that I can see. How hard could it be to change the
>> column declarations
>> if you ever move to a database without bigint?
>> There's not normally
>> much need for apps to be explicitly aware of the
>> column type names.
>>
>> regards, tom lane
>
>
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