[GENERAL] Cross-datatype Comparisons and Indexes

[Thomas F . O'Connell]

Since the current stable version of postgres (7.4.x) doesn't allow 
cross-datatype comparisons of indexes, is it always necessary to cast 
my application data explicitly in order for an index to be used, even 
among the integer types?

E.g., If I have a table with a bigint primary key and application data 
compared against that primary key, must I always explicitly cast the 
application data to bigint if I want postgres to use the index?

SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE primary_key_column = 42
vs.
SELECT * FROM some_table WHERE primary_key_column = 42::int8
There's no way to tell postgres to treat incoming data implicitly as 
the type of the column, right?

Thanks!
-tfo
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