Selecting a Data Type

Use the following principles to select efficient data types:

1. Select data types that facilitate data calculation.

   Generally, the calculation of integers (including common comparison calculations, such as =, >, <, ≥, ≤, and ≠ and group by) is more efficient than that of strings and floating point numbers. For example, if you need to perform a point query on a column-store table whose numeric column is used as a filter condition, the query will take over 10s. If you change the data type from NUMERIC to INT, the query duration will be reduced to 1.8s.

2. Select data types with a short length.

   Data types with short length reduce both the data file size and the memory used for computing, improving the I/O and computing performance. For example, use SMALLINT instead of INT, and INT instead of BIGINT.

3. Use the same data type for a join.

   You are advised to use the same data type for a join. To join columns with different data types, the database needs to convert them to the same type, which leads to additional performance overheads.