After some thought into this, I believe that I may actually need to eventually "search" this field, and may need an index on it. After talking to others at the office, they think that maybe I should try and create three varchar(254) fields and tie them together. Therefore I can have a larger description field, and still be able to index. Is this a bad or crazy idea? I have never heard of doing this, but I can via code, show the results from three tables and concat it together?
Any ideas, thoughts .... I figure I need about avg: 1000 characters per description. Thanks, Scott -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, May 23, 2005 8:58 AM To: Brent Baisley Cc: Scott Purcell; [email protected] Subject: Re: varchar to text Hi, I we can, one should ask if it is a good solution ? text can't be indexed as a varchar. You will need full-text indexing, or a b-tree index on a length-limited : mysql> create index titi on toto2(t); ERROR 1170 (42000): BLOB/TEXT column 't' used in key specification without a key length mysql> create index titi on toto2(t(100)); Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.16 sec) Records: 0 Duplicates: 0 Warnings: 0 Then queries have to changed for using the indexes and so on ... So study carefully before altering the table. Mathias Selon Brent Baisley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > You can safely change varchar to text, since they are the same data > type. > > ALTER TABLE table_name CHANGE field_name field_name TEXT > > But, as always, make sure you have a recent backup. There is always the > possibility that your computer will crash in the middle of the > operation due to a stray galactic neutrino that happens to collide with > a bit of your memory and cause a bit to flip. > > On May 23, 2005, at 9:37 AM, Scott Purcell wrote: > > > Hello, > > I created a table that uses a varchar(254) size field, and found out > > that the customers data is being truncated. It needs to be larger. > > > > Currently there are about 500 records (it is a description field) in > > the column. Upon reading the docs, it looks like I need to use a > > "text" type column. > > > > I have never done an alter with records in a table, specifically when > > it is client-data. How, or where, can I get information on how to > > alter the table to be a text field, or do I need to copy all the data > > to a tmp table, create a new table and copy all the data back to the > > new table with a "text" column? > > > > I have no experience with this area of sql. > > > > Thanks, > > Scott > > > > -- > > MySQL General Mailing List > > For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql > > To unsubscribe: > > http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > -- > Brent Baisley > Systems Architect > Landover Associates, Inc. > Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments > p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577 > > > -- > MySQL General Mailing List > For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql > To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- MySQL General Mailing List For list archives: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql To unsubscribe: http://lists.mysql.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
