Question

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Is there a REAL performance difference between INT and VARCHAR primary keys?

I am looking to create an effective table that is supposed to be very big. I want to ease the server’s work load as much as I can.

In a MYSQL query, should I search a certain row by looking for a user ID (number) or a username (string)?

What is the fastest?

Thanks a lot for your help

Regards

Answer 1

MySQL is faster when working with integers, and furthermore faster when working with an integer in which has and index — exactly what user_id’s are meant for! 🙂

usually an ID row would look like this:

create table `table_name` (
`id` int unsigned not null auto_increment primary key
...