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Message Posted: Fri, 14 May 2004 @ 19:15:41 GMT


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Subj:		Are Numeric Keys and Indices more efficient?

From:		Harvat, Joe

I recently started working as a consultant for a client with a large, Teradata data warehouse. It would appear most of the tables I've seen so far are defined with unique keys on columns that are character data type. Other relational database environments in which I've worked usually specified key columns that were integer or long integer data types. I was always told that these were more efficient (i.e. faster) than character fields. Is this still (or was it ever) true? If it does make a difference, has anyone seen any reliable statistics for how big of a difference it makes?

Thanks for your insights.

Joe Harvat
Professional Data Resources, Inc.
Cincinnati, Ohio