> > The question, though, becomes what percentage of operations on a
> > NUMERIC field are arithmetic, and what percentage are storage/retrieval.
> Good point.
We assume that most data stays inside the database on every query.
That is, one should optimize for comparison/calculation speed, not
formatting speed. If you are comparing a bunch of rows to return one,
you will be much happier if the comparison happens quickly, as opposed
to doing that slowly but formatting the single output value quickly.
An RDBMS can't really try to optimize for the opposite case, since
that isn't how it is usually used...
- Thomas
--
Thomas Lockhart lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu
South Pasadena, California