Following might help ...
* Integer Operations in PL/SQL
PL/SQL supports PLS_INTEGER as a native datatype: the operations on
PLS_INTEGER are performed by the PL/SQL interpreter itself. Numeric types,
such as INTEGER and NUMBER, are represented in the 22 byte Oracle number
format. Oracle number libraries are used to implement arithmetic operations
on these types. Furthermore, the INTEGER type is a constrained subtype of
NUMBER with a precision of 0. On assignments to INTEGER variables, precision
checking is done at run-time. Both PLS_INTEGER and BINARY_INTEGER are both
represented as a signed 4-byte quantity ("sb4"). But, BINARY_INTEGER
arithmetic is costly: the operands are first converted to Oracle number and
then the Oracle number library is used to compute the result as another
Oracle number. This results in increased use of temporaries and data
conversion, and, hence, poor performance. On the other hand, native integer
arithmetic is used to efficiently implement arithmetic operations on
PLS_INTEGERs. The numeric types NATURAL, NATURALN, POSITIVE, POSITIVEN, and
SIGNTYPE are subtypes of BINARY_INTEGER (refer to [5] for details) with
"stricter" range constraints. There is considerable overhead (about 3-4
byte-code instructions) in the enforcement of these range constraints on
every assignment (or parameter passing) to variables of these types.
HTH
Raj
______________________________________________________
Rajendra Jamadagni MIS, ESPN Inc.
Rajendra dot Jamadagni at ESPN dot com
Any opinion expressed here is personal and doesn't reflect that of ESPN Inc.
QOTD: Any clod can have facts, but having an opinion is an art !
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