Thread: array vs flat tables performance

array vs flat tables performance

From
"Oren Mazor"
Date:
I'm about to add another table to the project I'm working on and the
suggested plan of action is to use arrays. Since performance is an issue,
I'm wondering, what exactly is the difference?

in other words, I could have a flat table such as:

UID1 - ITEM1
UID1 - ITEM2
UID1 - ITEM3
UID7 - ITEM12

or I could use arrays:

UID1 - {ITEM1,ITEM2,ITEM3}
UID7 - {ITEM12}

is the latter simply syntactic sugar for the former?

thanks
Oren

--
Oren Mazor // Developer, Sysadmin, Explorer
GPG Key: http://www.grepthemonkey.org/secure
"Ut sementem feceris, ita metes"

Re: array vs flat tables performance

From
"Oren Mazor"
Date:
this is just for closure.

the array is actually stored as a string by postgres. a string that
happens to have lots of brackets in it. you only get processing overhead
when you convert this string into a datastructure that makes sense for
arrays.

Oren

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005 14:43:30 -0400, Oren Mazor <oren.mazor@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I'm about to add another table to the project I'm working on and the
> suggested plan of action is to use arrays. Since performance is an
> issue, I'm wondering, what exactly is the difference?
>
> in other words, I could have a flat table such as:
>
> UID1 - ITEM1
> UID1 - ITEM2
> UID1 - ITEM3
> UID7 - ITEM12
>
> or I could use arrays:
>
> UID1 - {ITEM1,ITEM2,ITEM3}
> UID7 - {ITEM12}
>
> is the latter simply syntactic sugar for the former?
>
> thanks
> Oren
>



--
Oren Mazor // Developer, Sysadmin, Explorer
GPG Key: http://www.grepthemonkey.org/secure
"Ut sementem feceris, ita metes"