Maybe storing it into a CHAR(22) using OCTECTS charset? Helen's book describes octets as:
OCTETS | BINARY Bytes which will not be interpreted as characters. Useful for storing binary data, GUID strings, hexidecimal numbers and for correcting string data that is causing transliteration errors. Aliased as BINARY from the “2” series onward. HTH, Carlos Firebird Performance in Detail - http://videos.firebirddevelopersday.com www.firebirdnews.org - www.FireBase.com.br bbmpcfs> Hi all, bbmpcfs> I have volunteered to write a statistics-type program in bbmpcfs> Lazarus/FreePascal under Linux and I need an embedded database, that bbmpcfs> means it has to be Firebird. I've used a lot of database software bbmpcfs> before, but never Firebird (nor Interbase, for that matter). I do NOT bbmpcfs> want to force users to install a full-blown database server in order bbmpcfs> to use the software. bbmpcfs> My problem is that I must avoid duplicated records in the database, bbmpcfs> the unique key is a complicated structure containing four 16-bit words bbmpcfs> plus a 108-bit set of flags. The combination of the whole lot must be bbmpcfs> unique. I don't need to retrieve this data other than to check for bbmpcfs> duplicate records, so I can massage it in FreePascal so that it can go bbmpcfs> into the database in any form that's desirable. bbmpcfs> If I were using PostgreSQL, I'd store the whole lot as a single bbmpcfs> 172-bit bitstring, but I can't find any mention of an equivalent data bbmpcfs> type in the Firebird documentation that I've been able to find. bbmpcfs> So, how would you store this data for greatest speed/efficiency in bbmpcfs> checking for duplicates, please? I'm looking at a few million records bbmpcfs> in the database, and there's a record size of around 350-400 bytes. bbmpcfs> Thanks, bbmpcfs> Brian. bbmpcfs> ------------------------------------ bbmpcfs> Posted by: brian <br...@meadows.pair.com> bbmpcfs> ------------------------------------ bbmpcfs> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ bbmpcfs> Visit http://www.firebirdsql.org and click the Documentation item bbmpcfs> on the main (top) menu. Try FAQ and other links from the left-side menu there. bbmpcfs> Also search the knowledgebases at bbmpcfs> http://www.ibphoenix.com/resources/documents/ bbmpcfs> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ bbmpcfs> ------------------------------------ bbmpcfs> Yahoo Groups Links
