On Thu, Apr 28, 2011 at 12:17 AM, Kevin Grittner
<
Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
>
> Dhimant Patel <
drp4kri@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I am a new comer on postgres world and now using it for some
> > serious (at least for me) projects. I have a need where I am
> > running some analytical + aggregate functions on data where
> > ordering is done on Date type column.
> >
> > From my initial read on documentation I believe internally a date
> > type is represented by integer type of data. This makes me wonder
> > would it make any good to create additional column of Integer type
> > and update it as data gets added and use this integer column for
> > all ordering purposes for my sqls - or should I not hasitate using
> > Date type straight into my sql for ordering?
>
> I doubt that this will improve performance, particularly if you ever
> want to see your dates formatted as dates.
>
> > Better yet, is there anyway I can verify impact of ordering on
> > Date type vs. Integer type, apart from using \timing and explain
> > plan?
>
> You might be better off just writing the code in the most natural
> way, using the date type for dates, and then asking about any
> queries which aren't performing as you hope they would. Premature
> optimization is often counter-productive. If you really want to do
> some benchmarking of relative comparison speeds, though, see the
> generate_series function -- it can be good at generating test tables
> for such things.