Thanks for the feedback. Good Stuff! I should have been more detailed about the numerics being stored. Firstly, the data in question originates in other systems and is brought into this table via a SSIS job. It is then being used for reporting. I have been asked to build a cube from it.

The numerics appear to be key values. In fact some of the column names have 'Code' in the name. Their values? 578, 99 , 2010, 43417620, 000, 63, 9, 4. Nothing too large. There are also several columns that represent a count for a given fiscal year so values like 20, 4 and zero are common.

Another obvious numeric would be an auto-incrementing identity field, which the majority of these appeared to be. I don't have much background on the data yet.

I once heard that SQL is optimized and works most efficiently with numerical data. I'm not sure of the rationale for this unless the way it is stored in the indexes, or that there isn't as hefty a conversion required, or what. If that is the case then it would make sense to store the numbers in the right sized integer fields..especially if the original tables had them as integers to begin with.

Is there any truth to SQL Server performs optimally with numeric data? What about numeric vs char indexes? does one provide a benefit over another?