--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "red_october_canada"
<red_october_canada@...> wrote:

>
> When I make a field of the subject type, what is the maximum (largest)
> integer I can put into the field. The docs say there is a difference
> between signed and unsigned. So where do I "tell" firebird that I
> want this to be an unsigned field so I can get the max unsigned
> integer value into the field?
>
> If I only enter unsigned values into the field, and never once enter a
> signed value, does that mean I can just "keep going" and stuff in
> unsigned integer values and just "expect" FB to "know" that I want an
> "all unsigned" values field?
>
> Thanks in advance for your help.
>

aka BIGINT

-(2^63) to ((2^63)-1)

which is
-9,223,372,036,854,775,808 to 9,223,372,036,854,775,807

which is probably more than the number of atoms in the known universe.
If generated at a rate of 5 million per second (and I would like to
see that hardware), you have nearly 60 thousand years before you (or
rather someone else) has to worry.

If you wanted to store all the positive integers in a table with
nothing other than the single BIGINT field, it would take over 8.5
billion Terabytes (and Firebird would add overhead to the size of each
record). At this point I will remind you that NTFS is (in theory) good
for 256 TB volumes, and there are record count limits and table size
implementation limits under Firebird that are significantly lower.

Adam