Selecting a Data type¶
You can use data types with the following features to improve efficiency:
Data types that boost execution efficiency
Generally, the calculation of integers (including common comparison calculations, such as =, >, <, >=, <=, and ≠ and GROUP BY) is more efficient than that of strings and floating point numbers. For example, if you need to perform a point query on a column-store table whose NUMERIC column is used as a filter criterion, the query will take over 10 seconds. If you change the data type from NUMERIC to INT, the query takes only about 1.8 seconds.
Data types with a short length
Data types with short length reduce both the data file size and the memory used for computing, improving the I/O and computing performance. For example, use SMALLINT instead of INT, and INT instead of BIGINT.
Same data type for a join
You are advised to use the same data type for a join. To join columns with different data types, the database needs to convert them to the same type, which leads to additional performance overheads.