What datatype should I use?

[BobLoblaws]

I am creating an order table that will hold an average of 60 million records for each year, and expected to contain 5 years worth of data. So I'm looking at approximately 300 million records for the table.
What is the best datatype to use for creating a Unique OrderID? Should it be numeric, float, real, etc.

Much appreciated.

 

[VogonPoet]

I'm not sure it is best, but I would suggest integer. Numeric, float and real all allow decimals and therefore use some extra storage to maintian that part of the number. An int takes 4 bytes, float and real take 4 or 8 bytes and a numeric takes at least 5 bytes.

Michael

 

[BobLoblaws]

What is the largest value that an int can hold in SQL Server?

 

[VogonPoet]

3 billion-ish. Do you have access to SQL Server Books Online? It describes all the data types.

Michael

 

[tlbroadbent]

Actually, Int is limited to 2^31 - 1 or about 2 billion. Bigint is limited to 2^63 - 1 (9,223,372,036,854,775,807). I don't think you'd have a problem using either data type. Int should be good for about 35 years. Terry L. Broadbent - DBA
Computing Links:

http://tlbroadbent.home.attbi.com/prog.htm

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