Yesterday I wrote about selects on int4 vs. texts.
One of the comments that caught my attention was question about index creation time. So, let's see…
Tag: natural
“= 123” vs. “= ‘depesz'”. What is faster?
There is this idea that normal form in databases require you to use integer, auto incrementing, primary keys.
The idea was discussed by many people, I will just point you to series of three blog posts on the subject by Josh Berkus ( part 1, 2 and 3, and reprise).
One of the points that proponents of surrogate keys (i.e. those based on integer and sequences) raise is that comparing integers is faster than comparing texts. So,
SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 123
is faster than
SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = 'depesz'
Is it?