Re: [HACKERS] Reducing the overhead of NUMERIC data

[patches removed]

Tom Lane wrote:

>Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>
>
>>It seems straightforward enough to put in an additional test, similar to
>>the ones already there so that if its too big for a decimal we make it a
>>float straight away - only a float can be that big in that case. After
>>that I can't really see what the problem is?
>>
>>
>
>Wrong answer. You'll be introducing weird corner cases into the type
>resolution behavior.
>
>An approach that would actually have some credibility would be to not
>resolve constants to NUMERIC right away, but to invent an UNKNOWNNUMERIC
>pseudotype with coercion behavior comparable to the existing UNKNOWN
>type for string literals. This has been proposed before but hasn't
>really been needed so far. Of course, this converts the project from a
>minor localized hack on NUMERIC into a major piece of fiddling with the
>type resolution rules, with the potential for unforeseen side-effects on
>the behavior of other data types. It might be worth doing anyway --- I
>don't recall at the moment what problems UNKNOWNNUMERIC was intended to
>solve, but if they're still open issues then it's something we ought to
>get around to sometime.
>
>
>
>

Could someone please quantify how much bang we might get for what seems
like quite a lot of bucks?

I appreciate the need for speed, but the saving here strikes me as
marginal at best, unless my instincts are all wrong (quite possible)

cheers

andrew