On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 2:44 PM, Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> wrote:
> Strings of digits used that way should not be stored in numeric fields at
> all, IMNSHO, just as zip codes and phone numbers should not be. They should
> be text in the first place, and if the OP had done that he wouldn't have had
> any difficulty about this. I hope that's what the Lone Ranger would do ...
The argument isn't about whether the user made the right design
choices; it's about whether he should be forced to insert an explicit
type cast to get the query to do what it is unambiguously intended to
do. I don't believe it's entirely self-evident that it's always
better to store strings of integers in a text column rather than as an
integer or bigint - integers are pretty fast and compact. Even
granting that a text field would have been better, nobody's arguing
that you can't do LIKE against an integer column; we're just
discussing what syntax is required to make the user's intent
acceptably clear.
--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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