[firebird-support] AW: Performance comparision for primary keys - int vs. varchar

[Köditz, Martin martin.koed...@it-syn.de [firebird-support]]

Hi,


I'm using integer IDs for primary keys in my tables. What if I would use 
varchar fields instead? Will I lose performance in that case, especially for 
big tables? Will joins still work as fast as they do for the integer column.


In my case I have a table TBL_BANK (
BANK_ID int,
BIC varchar(11),
...
)


So what will happen if I switch the PK to BIC in that case? I would change the 
FKs to BIC too. I don't know how the index keys are build and stored in 
firebird. So I cannot say this way is faster than the other one. But maybe 
someone else can do.


Regards
Martin