I am interested in the first point you made that:
having varchar(12) in every referencing table, takes more storage
space.
The thing is though, if I have a serial primary key then it would be an additional column. Or you are saying the space taken by a VARCHAR(12) field is more than two INT fields? ( or is it the fact that when it is referenced it will appear several times?) I guess the reason I am resisting the idea of an additional primary key field is to avoid the additional lookup in some queries. Perhaps it's a minor almost irrelevant performance factor.
Thanks
Sally
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---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
