On Jan 3, 2007, at 5:24 , Luca Ferrari wrote:
Running the database, the users
decided to place numbers as strings, so values like 00110002 and so
on.
Note that '00110002' is not a number (i.e., it's not equal to
110002): it's a string of digits.
is there a tool or a
way to easily do such refactoring or should I write a program on my
own to do
this?
Not that I know of, though ALTER TABLE <table> ALTER <column>
TYPE ... is pretty easy to use.
And moreover a database design question: is a better idea to choose
always
(when possible) numeric keys?
Depends on your requirements. This is an oft-discussed topic about
which you can find many more opinions by googling on natural and
surrogate keys.
Michael Glaesemann
grzm seespotcode net
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