>>Hi,
>>
>>I am deciding on what type of field/column/expression to use for extracting records from a table. My choices are:
>>1. Char field (of about 10 to 20) (depends on the business rule) that will be empty ('') for certain records
>>2. Integer field that will have an entry 1000 (or some large number) for certain records.
>>
>>So the SQL Select will be approximately as following:
>>
>>1.
>>

>>select * from Mytable where <SomeWhereExpression>  and len(rtrim(ltrim(char_field))) > 0
>>

>>
>>2.
>>

>>select * from Mytable where <SomeWhereExpression>  and integ_field < 1000
>>

>>
>>Generally the size of the MyTable will be about 10,000 to 30,000 (just guess on my part).
>>
>>Which of the above (given that there is an index in SQL Server on both fields) will execute faster (generally)?
>>
>>TIA.
>
>
>The first I guess
>- integer is only 4 bytes to compare

Did you mean the second? E.g. I would expect the select based on integer field to be faster. If you're using SQL 2008, you can make a filtered index for either of the fields with the above condition and then both cases will be very quick.