Franco,
> Wouldn't it be the most portable solution to work with a domain?
> CREATE DOMAIN BIG_NUMBER AS BIGINT;
>
> If I use BIG_NUMBER everywhere I need it in my database, porting it to
> other database products should be easy... any SQL 92 compliant dbms
> should support domains.
This is a good idea, on general principles. Abstracted design is a good
thing.
Regrettably, though, a lot of commercial databases do not support DOMAIN.
You'll need to check which databases you are thinking of porting to first.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco