Words missing in the following txt

On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 8:28 PM, Leslie S Satenstein
<lsatenstein@yahoo.com> wrote:

In 8.1.1. Integer Types

The ending sentence in the 2nd paragraph reads...

The bigint type should only be used if the integer range is insufficient, because the latter is definitely faster.

Integers are bigger or smaller, the sentence could read better if phrased as follows:

Use regular integers for fast efficient execution. The bigint type should only be used if the integer range is insufficient.

The original phrasing might be a little too cute in the sense that
"the latter" could be taken to refer to "the integer range" rather
than "the integer data type", but the intended meaning is pretty
obvious in context. I think your revised phrasing is more negative
about bigints than we actually want to be. I think bigints also
provide fast, efficient execution (compare with, say, numeric) but
they are not AS fast as integers.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

--- On Wed, 12/29/10, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [DOCS] Words missing in the following txt
To: "Leslie S Satenstein" <lsatenstein@yahoo.com>
Cc: pgsql-docs@postgresql.org
Date: Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 6:45 AM
On Sun, Dec 26, 2010 at 8:28 PM,
Leslie S Satenstein
<lsatenstein@yahoo.com>
wrote:

In 8.1.1. Integer Types

The ending sentence in the 2nd paragraph reads...

The bigint type should only be used if the integer

range is insufficient, because the latter is definitely
faster.

Integers are bigger or smaller, the sentence could

read better if phrased as follows:

Use regular integers for fast efficient execution. The

bigint type should only be used if the integer range is
insufficient.

The original phrasing might be a little too cute in the
sense that
"the latter" could be taken to refer to "the integer range"
rather
than "the integer data type", but the intended meaning is
pretty
obvious in context.  I think your revised phrasing is
more negative
about bigints than we actually want to be.  I think
bigints also
provide fast, efficient execution (compare with, say,
numeric) but
they are not AS fast as integers.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

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A good compromise is to perhaps consider the following.

The bigint type should only be used if the integer range is insufficient, because calculation with the latter is definitely faster.

Leslie S Satenstein <lsatenstein@yahoo.com> writes:

A good compromise is to perhaps consider the following.

The bigint type should only be used if the integer range is insufficient, because calculation with the latter is definitely faster.

This doesn't seem to me to fix the basic problem, which is that "the
latter" appears to refer to "integer range". You don't calculate with
ranges, but with types. Maybe it should be

The bigint type should only be used if the range of the integer
type is insufficient, because the latter is definitely faster.

I'm not that excited about making the text specify that calculations are
faster, because on most modern machines the actual calculation speed
difference is pretty minuscule. What's expensive about bigint is
pushing around twice as much data and/or having to do palloc's.

regards, tom lane

On Wed, Dec 29, 2010 at 12:46 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Leslie S Satenstein <lsatenstein@yahoo.com> writes:

A good compromise is to perhaps consider the following.

The bigint type should only be used if the integer range is insufficient, because calculation with the latter is definitely faster.

This doesn't seem to me to fix the basic problem, which is that "the
latter" appears to refer to "integer range".  You don't calculate with
ranges, but with types.  Maybe it should be

       The bigint type should only be used if the range of the integer
       type is insufficient, because the latter is definitely faster.

I'm not that excited about making the text specify that calculations are
faster, because on most modern machines the actual calculation speed
difference is pretty minuscule.  What's expensive about bigint is
pushing around twice as much data and/or having to do palloc's.

Yeah, I was actually wondering whether the first step here might be to
benchmark this.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company