The early versions SQLite didn't make much differentiation between strings and numbers. Due to performance reasons, that kind of intelligence was built into SQLite pretty quick.

I would posit that you're not quite sure what you're looking for from a database. Those annoying types are actually a very good thing, kinda like those annoying foreign keys. Each additional constraint you have to deal with when changing the data means one more assumption you can make when querying that data. The more assumptions you can make when querying, the faster the queries can go and the more confidence you have that the results are accurate.

Remember - SELECTs generally make up over 99% of a database's activity. If you can improve the cost of a SELECT statement by 1% taking a 10% hit on each modify statement, that's a net gain of quite a lot. And, you have greater confidence in your data. That's a pretty good tradeoff to me.

As for type conversions ... if you're doing type conversions, either your schema is wrong or you're not using it correctly. You should never ever have to use a type conversion, not even once. And, yes, that's a hard rule.

My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re: Typeless Relational Database by dragonchild
in thread Typeless Relational Database by tomazos

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