Theo,
> Does anyone have any better suggestions???
Well, one suggestion would be to take a machete to your application. Putting
key references and text data in the same column? Sheesh.
If that's not an option, in addition to the approach you've taken, you could
also do a partial index on the appropriate numeric values:
CREATE INDEX idx_content_numeric ON botched_table(content)
WHERE content ~ '^[0-9]{1,9}$';
However, this approach may be more/less effective that the segregation
approach you've already taken.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco