Weekend Reading: Database performance and data types

File this one away in the "needed to sit down to review it" type of follow up post, but the article by Pythian's Edwin Sarmiento is no less effective or topical because of that.  As I've peeled back the onion of what makes Oracle databases and applications tick, the lessons suggested here will help you when designing solutions and also are good reminders for how you can either tune something wrong or look for a potential problem just waiting to strike.  Wouldn't we all like to avoid database bloat?  Who is not looking for faster ways to access our data?