Number or float for primary key?

Published: 18 May 2004

From a performance point of view, is it recommended to use a number or a float (0 decimal) as primary key?
Many systems use surrogate primary keys whose values are generated by Oracle sequences; these are typically integers. If, however, your table contains a column of type FLOAT that is a candidate primary key, the use of the column as the primary key should not cause any noticeable performance degradation. As always, your best bet is to verify through testing.

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