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DaveOn Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 9:18 PM, David Johnston
<polobo@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> the data type does not need any arithmetic operations (as of integers).
You arguably do not have a number but simply a string that looks like a number. Other examples are zip-codes and phone-numbers if you ignore symbols. Thus you should probably use an appropriately sized char/varchar.
Do you think using char/varchar which in this case will take about 20 bytes for each entry is more proper than using bigint with only 4 bytes?
Just something to consider; there is no hard and fast rule about this kind of thing. If you can think of any logical use of arithmetic operators, even if you do not need them now, you should use an integer.
The data is some kind of identifiers. I don't think they will need any kind of arithmetic operators at all :)
thank you in advance
Arash