Hi, I'm working with a big database (15 million of observations, 2 gb) and I would like to make it as lighter as possible. The only ways that I come up to do that is code string variables (i.e. gender: "male" vs. "female" as 0 and 1). However it's unclear to me which role values' labels plays. Does a label 0 = "Male", makes it heaver? I'm asking this because I have for example a variable "country" with more than 200 possible values. Furthermore, is there any other trick or thing to consider in order to make a database lighter?

Cheers