Tim, > > due to prefix compression within the index structures > Ah, yes, I did write one of those once - a 1980s spelling dictionary for a > word > processor, where being able to encode an entire word in the smallest > possible number of five-bit codes was *much* more important than being > able to read the list backwards. (I think we ended up with less than 3 bytes > per word for an English dictionary?) > > I'm slightly surprised that it's thought to matter with this century's disk > prices > however.
There are more "costs" that just disk space usage which need to be considered: - Data Transfer speed from disk to RAM - Data transfer from RAM to CPU - RAM consumption of cache - Loss of cache efficiency due to higher number of pages used by index structures I do agree though, that if everyone was using SSDs for storage, the weight/strength of the above would be much weaker. Sean
