Kenneth Marshall wrote:
How likely is it that you will get a hash collision, two strings that are
different that will hash to the same value? To avoid this requires a very
large hash key (128 bits, minimum)- otherwise you get into birthday attack
problems. With a 32-bit hash, the likelyhood is greater than 50% that two
strings in a collection of 100,000 will hash to the same value. With a
64-bit hash, the likelyhood is greater than 50% that two strings in a
collection of 10 billion will has to same value. 10 billion is a large
number, but not an unreasonable number, of strings to want to put into a
hash table- and it's exactly this case where the O(1) cost of hashtables
starts being a real win.
Brian
Yes, there is a non-negligible chance of collision (In a DB is there
any chance that is non-negligible? :) ) and the values must be checked
against the actual. The win is the collapse of the index size and only
needed to check a small fraction of the actual tuples.
Ah, OK- I misunderstood you. I thought you were saying that the hash
values would need to be unique, and you wouldn't check the original
values at all. My bad.
Brian
