From: walter harms Date: August 29 2008 8:57am Subject: performance key-value - int vs ascii ? List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/214292 Message-Id: <48B7B9F2.1010605@bfs.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi list, I need to store what is basically a key-value pair. A few years ago i would have choosen an integer as key and used a translation table to get the name (char[]) for the key. Since diskspace is plenty i thinking about to use the name directly. does anyone has any idea what is the performance penalty ? in short: name char(20) vs code int and a second table code int value int value int name char(20) TIA, wh