From: Rolando Abarca <funkaster@...>
Date: 2008-11-13T00:37:52+09:00
Subject: Re: Convert text string i.e 'Peter' into integer ID

On Nov 12, 2008, at 12:06 PM, Justus Ohlhaver wrote:

> Thanks a lot everybody.  I'm really impressed by the quick and useful
> feedback.
>
> Todd, I was told that searching by integers instead of strings would
> speed up performance when using large mysql tables. Is that not so?

You should just index the column you need, and if you want that column  
to be unique, create a unique constraint:

create index <index_name> on <table_name> (<name_of_the_column>)

Something like that should work. To create the unique constraint, look  
on your database documentation.
Adding a column and getting a hash from a string is going to be slower  
than having an index at the database level.

> Justus

Regards,
-- 
Rolando Abarca M.