Re: Let's drop two obsolete features which are bear-traps for novices

On Mon, Nov 03, 2014 at 01:54:09PM +0100, Michael Banck wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 02.11.2014, 12:41 -0500 schrieb Tom Lane:
> > BTW, after reflecting a bit more I'm less than convinced that this
> > datatype is completely useless. Even if you prefer to store currency
> > values in numeric columns, casting to or from money provides a way to
> > accept or emit values in whatever monetary format the LC_MONETARY locale
> > setting specifies. That seems like a useful feature, and it's one you
> > could not easily duplicate using to_char/to_number (not to mention that
> > those functions aren't without major shortcomings of their own).
>
> As an additional datapoint, Vitesse Data changed the DB schema from
> NUMERIC to MONEY for their TPCH benchmark for performance reasons: "The
> modification to data types is easy to understand -- money and double
> types are faster than Numeric (and no one on this planet has a bank
> account that overflows the money type, not any time soon)."[1] And
> "Replaced NUMERIC fields representing currency with MONEY"[2].
>
> Not sure whether they modified/optimized PostgreSQL with respect to the
> MONEY data type and/or how much performance that gained, so CCing CK Tan
> as well.

How does our NUMERIC type's performance compare to other systems'
precise types? I realize that some of those systems might have
restrictions on publishing numbers they don't authorize, but they
might have pushed some authorized numbers if those numbers make them
look good.

Also, just a general three-state comparison, "we beat them handily,"
"we're somewhere near them" or "we're not even close" would be enough
to work from.

Cheers,
David.
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