>Question: if you have a columnn of unique numbers (ie: sku or sn), is it better to format that field as text or numeric?
>Thanks, Randy


Depends on several factors. Will you be using that key with other items? If so, then it's more straight-forward to maintain an index with something like:

INDEX ON sku+otherField TAG main

Than it is to do:

INDEX ON STR(sku,6,0)+otherField TAG main

Some people are die hard fanatics about always using integers for their unique/primary key fields. In my experience, it depends on the application, the nature of your data, the type of users/customers you'll have on the app ... many factors.

The short version is this: The solution has to make sense for the size and scope of the application. Designing a little system for an office staff of five people requires significantly different design strategies than does designing a system to work for Facebook.