numerical primary key vs alphanumerical primary key

[Виктор Егоров]

I have read a lot of different information about the benefits of using
numerical primary key vs alphanumerical primary key(small size). And what I
am gathering is that for performance there is no more great advantage.
It seems like now RDBMS in general, postgres in particular handles pretty
well joins on text indexes.

Please, take a look at this blog post:
http://www.depesz.com/2012/06/07/123-vs-depesz-what-is-faster/

[Julien Cigar]

The biggest difference in performance between text and integer keys is
usually down to whether you're inserting in order or not. Inserting in
order is tons faster regardless of the type, since it keeps the index
unfragmented and doesn't cause page splits.

Hi,
I have read a lot of different information about the benefits of using
numerical primary key vs alphanumerical primary key(small size). And
what I am gathering is that for performance there is no more great
advantage.
It seems like now RDBMS in general, postgres in particular handles
pretty well joins on text indexes.
Did I understand correctly?
Thanks,
Anne

[Grant Johnson]

My experience has been that the performance advantage for numeric keys is primarily an Oracle thing. However, Oracle is popular enough for people to assume that it applies to databases in general.

Post by Julien Cigar
The biggest difference in performance between text and integer keys is
usually down to whether you're inserting in order or not. Inserting in
order is tons faster regardless of the type, since it keeps the index
unfragmented and doesn't cause page splits.

Hi,
I have read a lot of different information about the benefits of

using

numerical primary key vs alphanumerical primary key(small size). And
what I am gathering is that for performance there is no more great
advantage.
It seems like now RDBMS in general, postgres in particular handles
pretty well joins on text indexes.
Did I understand correctly?
Thanks,
Anne

[Florent Guillaume]

For SQL Server, having a clustered index on a numeric incrementing key
is much better than having a semi-random uuid primary key used as the
clustered index itself.

Florent

Post by Grant Johnson
My experience has been that the performance advantage for numeric keys is
primarily an Oracle thing. However, Oracle is popular enough for people to
assume that it applies to databases in general.

Post by Julien Cigar
The biggest difference in performance between text and integer keys is
usually down to whether you're inserting in order or not. Inserting in order
is tons faster regardless of the type, since it keeps the index unfragmented
and doesn't cause page splits.
Hi,
I have read a lot of different information about the benefits of using
numerical primary key vs alphanumerical primary key(small size). And what I
am gathering is that for performance there is no more great advantage.
It seems like now RDBMS in general, postgres in particular handles pretty
well joins on text indexes.
Did I understand correctly?
Thanks,
Anne

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Florent Guillaume, Director of R&D, Nuxeo
Open Source, Java EE based, Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
http://www.nuxeo.com http://www.nuxeo.org [phone]

[Claudio Freire]

Post by Grant Johnson
My experience has been that the performance advantage for numeric keys is
primarily an Oracle thing. However, Oracle is popular enough for people to
assume that it applies to databases in general.

The advantage in PG also exists, only tied to size. It's not really
whether it's numeric or not, but whether values are big or not. Int or
other primitive types tend to be far faster to join because of their
fixed, small size. If you have a varchar, and if you have big values
from time to time, joining becomes heavy because the index is huge (it
has to contain the values).