ID number size

[Eric G]

I'm thinking of changing my StudentID numbering from a 3-digit number
(650 students approx.) to a 9-digit number.
Can someone tell me if there would be any hit on the speed of
processing queries and reports with these larger numbered ID's?

Thanks! Eric

 

[Adrian Jansen]

It depends whether the IDs are stored as numerics ( eg long integers ) or as
text. But you would have to do a *huge* amount of data manipulation to
notice the difference on such a small database.
--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen
J & K MicroSystems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control

 

[Eric G]

It depends whether the IDs are stored as numerics ( eg long integers ) or as

text. But you would have to do a *huge* amount of data manipulation to
notice the difference on such a small database.

Thanks for your help Adrian.
I wouldn't have even thought twice about whether to store as numeric
or text. I would have instinctively chosen numeric.
Would this be the correct way to go for StudentID (key ID field)?
And which of the two (numeric/text) might take some hit in this or
other scenarios?

Thanks. Eric

 

[Adrian Jansen]

If you use numerics, in particular long integers, your IDs get stored in 4
bytes, so in principle its faster to do that than text with up to 9
characters, but modern processors and the Jet engine are so fast in handling
either data type that you will still see no practical difference. The
overhead in loading a form with a couple of extra controls is probably more
than the diff in sorting a file with thousands of records of either type.

Note that as a long int, you are limited to numbers +/- 2147483647 ( 2^31 ),
so you can only just fit 9 digits, although you will run out of students
sometime before then

--
Regards,

Adrian Jansen
J & K MicroSystems
Microcomputer solutions for industrial control

 

[Eric G]

Thanks Adrian I feel much more re-assured now.