• Transparent to the user: exact same behaviour as if the table was storing string values, without the burden of actually doing so.
• Greatly improved query performance (comparing and writing int instead of string).

To declare a column as SYMBOL please refer to the section. To create an INDEX on SYMBOL, please refer to the index section.

• Symbol tables are stored separately from column data.
• Q conversion from to int and vice-versa when reading or writing data.
• For greater speed, symbol can be stored in the heap.