Re: Hardware upgrade for a high-traffic database

"Merlin Moncure" <merlin(dot)moncure(at)rcsonline(dot)com> writes:
> The following suggestion works in two principles: one is that instead of
> using timestamps for ordering, integers are quicker,

The difference would be pretty marginal --- especially if you choose to
use bigints instead of ints. (A timestamp is just a float8 or bigint
under the hood, and is no more expensive to compare than those datatypes.
Timestamps *are* expensive to convert for I/O, but comparison does not
have to do that.) I wouldn't recommend kluging up your data schema just
for that.

regards, tom lane