Re: bigint integers up to 19 digits. - Mailing list pgsql-performance

From Craig James
Subject Re: bigint integers up to 19 digits.
Date
Msg-id 4B6B153D.9030200@emolecules.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to bigint integers up to 19 digits.  (Tory M Blue <tmblue@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: bigint integers up to 19 digits.  (Tory M Blue <tmblue@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-performance
Tory M Blue wrote:
> I have a column that is a bigint that needs to store integers up to 19
> digits long. For the most part this works but we sometimes have
> numbers that are greater than 9223372036854775807.
> ...
> I was thinking of changing this to a real or double precision field,
> but read in the docs that the value stored is not always the value
> inserted...

They're actually less precise than the same size of integer.  Real/double datatypes trade more range for less precision
inthe same number of bytes. 

> My number will always be 19 digits long and always an integer.
> I looked into the numeric data type, but the docs say that it can be slow.

If it's *always* going to be 19 digits, couldn't you make it a text or char field?  You didn't say if this is really a
number. Do you do arithmetic with it? Sort it numerically?  Or is it just a long identifier that happens to only used
digits?

Craig James

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