I have a huge database where all the indexes are mainly built on one column - CountryID. This column is stored as an integer in the database, and the value can be in the range 1-99. My company will soon be out of country id:s, and the chief architects have decided that instead of increasing the countryid to a three digit value, it should be possible to use an alphanumeric value.
Example:
Currently: 01
Possible in the future: A1
The database is really enormous and already suffering from bad performance in some reports. I’m afraid if we switch the countryId column to a char in the database, the performance will be even worse. Does anyone have any suggestions to what I should do? I suppose I could convert the country Id “A1” to an ascii value before I enter it in the database. Would that increase performance(compared to a char value)?
Thanks,
Sunker