Is there an performance benefit to using int2 (instead of int4) in cases where i know i will be well within its numeric range? I want to conserve storage space and gain speed anywhere i can, but i know some apps simply end up casting 2byte data to 4byte (like Java int/short).
These int2 values will be used in primary and foreign key fields and I know that i must explicitly use tick marks (ex: where int2_column = '12') in order to make use of indexes, but my question is IS IT WORTH IT? IS THERE ANY REAL GAIN FOR DOING THIS? An simple scenario would be: Songs ------- song_id serial pkey genre int2 fkey title varchar ... Genres ------- genreid int2 pkey name varchar description varchar I KNOW that I am not going to have anywhere near 32,000+ different genres in my genre table so why use int4? Would that squeeze a few more milliseconds of performance out of a LARGE song table query with a genre lookup? Thanks, -Aaron ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: don't forget to increase your free space map settings