Is it possible to store a 1 byte number in Postgres?

Question

I have 7 8-bit integer values per record that I want to store in Postgres. Pg doesn\'t offer a single byte integer type, SMALLINT, or 2 bytes, being the smallest integer datatyp

Answer 1

Will you ever lookup records using these values?

If yes - use normal datatypes like int4 (or even int8 if you're on 64bit architecture).

If not - first ask yourself - what is the point of storing this values in Pg? You can use bytea (complicated i/o), or bitstrings (even more complicated i/o) but what is the point? How many billion records you're going to have? Did you actually check that smaller datatype uses less space (hint: it doesn't, check it - there are data alignment issues involved)? Are you working under impression that smaller datatype is faster (it isn't. It's actually more complex to compare two int2 values than two int4 values on 32bit architecture).