But why go to all that trouble when all you need is to display a character. Also, in a select statement you have to order by val(charField). I do most of my work with a SQL database and the rules are differrent there. Just seems a lot easier to have a number and not have to worry about all the rest. Last, there is the size of the column. A char(10) is bigger then an integer.

>You could also build the index like this:
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>

INDEX ON VAL (CharField) ...

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>>The exception to your statement is if you have to sort or display the column in numeric order. If the column is character then you have to deal with padding the left of the column with spaces or zeros to make it order correctly. I would rather use a number column and convert it to a character for display if an order is involved.