Is there an performance benefit to using int2 (instead of int4) in cases
where i know i will be well within its numeric range? I want to conserve
storage space and gain speed anywhere i can, but i know some apps simply end
up casting 2byte data to 4byte (like Java int/short).
These int2 values will be used in primary and foreign key fields and I know
that i must explicitly use tick marks (ex: where int2_column = '12') in
order to make use of indexes, but my question is IS IT WORTH IT? IS THERE
ANY REAL GAIN FOR DOING THIS?
An simple scenario would be:
Songs
-------
song_id serial pkey
genre int2 fkey
title varchar
...
Genres
-------
genreid int2 pkey
name varchar
description varchar
I KNOW that I am not going to have anywhere near 32,000+ different genres in
my genre table so why use int4? Would that squeeze a few more milliseconds
of performance out of a LARGE song table query with a genre lookup?
Thanks,
-Aaron
