On Sunday, February 11, 2024, veem v <veema0...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Sun, 11 Feb 2024 at 19:02, Peter J. Holzer <hjp-pg...@hjp.at> wrote: > >> > Similarly for Number/Numeric data type. >> >> Number in Oracle and numeric in PostgreSQL are variable length types. >> But in PostgreSQL you also have a lot of fixed length numeric types >> (from boolean to bigint as well as float4 and float8) and you would >> normally prefer those over numeric (unless you really need a decimal or >> very long type). So padding is something you would encounter in a >> typical PostgreSQL database while it just wouldn't happen in a typical >> Oracle database. >> >> >> When you said *"you would normally prefer those over numeric " *I was > thinking the opposite. As you mentioned integer is a fixed length data type > and will occupy 4 bytes whether you store 15 or 99999999.But in case of > variable length type like Number or numeric , it will resize itself based > on the actual data, So is there any downside of going with the variable > length data type like Numeric, Varchar type always for defining the data > elements? >
Regardless of the size of the actual data in a variable width column expect that the size and computational overhead is going to make using that field more costly than using a fixed width field. You don’t have a choice for text, it is always variable width, but for numeric, if can use an integer variant you will come out ahead versus numeric. David J.
