>>>>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

Yes, I saw that. Thank you for clarifying. And as I was reading your's and Naomi's exchange of messages I realized that I could have assigned SmallInt type to this column since I don't foresee values ever being greater than 10,000 and never negative. So the search will be even faster. Tengo razon?