On Tue, Jan 06, 2015 at 12:09:56PM -0500, Michael Heaney wrote: > I'm fairly new to Postgres, and have a design issue for which an > array of integers might be a good solution. But I'd like to hear > from the experts before proceeding down this path. The biggest consideration is if you are ever intending to use the values in a join condition. Arrays a efficient space-wise and you also have good indexing strategies with GIN indexes. You will need to reframe your queries in terms of ([x] subset-of field) but that's relatively straightforward. What doesn't work or is fiddely: - foreign keys - selecting part of the list - reordering or otherwise manipulating the list. basically, if conceptually the list is a single object which you're really only going to want to access as a whole, but still want good indexing, then arrays are for you. BTW, looking at your example, you might be more interested in ranges, see for example: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/rangetypes.html Conceptually they are a bit different and there isn't support for multi-ranges AFAIK but they might be more appropriate. Hope this helps, -- Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@xxxxxxxxx> http://svana.org/kleptog/ > He who writes carelessly confesses thereby at the very outset that he does > not attach much importance to his own thoughts. -- Arthur Schopenhauer
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