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Asked: 2026-05-18T01:19:31+00:00

My project ( C# ) deals with many files about 1 MB ~ 2

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My project (C#) deals with many files about 1 MB ~ 2 GB in size. SQL server 2008 database is used. In long-term I need to do some operations over them like total sum of their size and …

At first glance I was planned to store their size in byte (in C# code long, in database BigInt) because of file size nature and its precise. I was thinking maybe its a better idea to use a double and consider file size in MB because most of them are 1~2000 MB and make more sense while talking about files of this project. Is there any advantage/disadvantage over these two kind of designs both in code (performance issues when there are many mathematics operations) and database (batch operations over many files) ?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You should use long/BigInt, for a few reasons:

    1. File sizes are in bytes, which are a precise discrete measure — so you might as well use a precise discrete value.
    2. If you use a decimal, it’s hard to know what scale you’re dealing with — kb? bytes? mb? But if you’re dealing with integers, you’ll probably know that it’s in bytes.
    3. Not a super big deal, but performance is slightly better on most processors with longs than with decimals.
    4. As far as I know, it’s the conventional thing to do.
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