ID number size

  • Thread starter Thread starter Eric G
  • Start date Start date
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Eric G

I'm thinking of changing my StudentID numbering from a 3-digit number
(650 students approx.) to a 9-digit number.
Can someone tell me if there would be any hit on the speed of
processing queries and reports with these larger numbered ID's?

Thanks! Eric
 
It depends whether the IDs are stored as numerics ( eg long integers ) or as
text. But you would have to do a *huge* amount of data manipulation to
notice the difference on such a small database.
--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen
J & K MicroSystems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
 
It depends whether the IDs are stored as numerics ( eg long integers ) or as
text. But you would have to do a *huge* amount of data manipulation to
notice the difference on such a small database.
Click to expand...


Thanks for your help Adrian.
I wouldn't have even thought twice about whether to store as numeric
or text. I would have instinctively chosen numeric.
Would this be the correct way to go for StudentID (key ID field)?
And which of the two (numeric/text) might take some hit in this or
other scenarios?

Thanks. Eric
 
If you use numerics, in particular long integers, your IDs get stored in 4
bytes, so in principle its faster to do that than text with up to 9
characters, but modern processors and the Jet engine are so fast in handling
either data type that you will still see no practical difference. The
overhead in loading a form with a couple of extra controls is probably more
than the diff in sorting a file with thousands of records of either type.

Note that as a long int, you are limited to numbers +/- 2147483647 ( 2^31 ),
so you can only just fit 9 digits, although you will run out of students
sometime before then :-)

--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen
J & K MicroSystems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control
 
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