>>>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
>
>Gregory,
>
>I am sorry but your message is not 100% clear (and it is probably just me). You are saying the 1st but then you refer to the second case with the word "only". Could you please clarify? Thank you.
Sorry, my mistake - see my anser to Nadya
Gregory