[support] impact of converting db varchars to integers

[Larry Garfield]

On Wed, 04 Apr 2007 10:07:45 -0400, Morbus Iff <morbus at disobey.com> wrote:
>> To improve Drupal performance, our client has suggested to change the
>> field types from varchars to integers in some tables.
> 
> This isn't really the list for that sort of discussion. For the
> technical aspects of doing so, and whether it's a viable approach, you
> really want to ask on the development list, not the support list.
> 
> However, you'd really have to provide benchmarks that showed an amazing
> improvement in performance. IE., how does your client have any sort of
> clue that this is actually a good thing? Are they just waxing poetic
> about things they think they know something about, but don't?

Well, joins on integer fields are faster than varchar fields.  Whether they're enough faster to justify the loss in flexibility/readability/debugability that would come from it I don't know, but I doubt it.

Again, though, this should be on the dev list if anywhere.

--Larry Garfield