Hi Michiel,

Many thanks for you in-depth reply!  It certainly answered my question : )

The reason for the long 'Symptom' is that we are using OTRS FAQ as a 
knowledgebase, into which I am copying and pasting a lot of text. 

I am going to try edit the FAQ layout so you can't see the Symptom, 
Problem and Solution fields as it doesn't really suit the format we would 
like.

Your suggestion of changing the field type to mediumtext worked perfectly 
thank you very much for that! 

Kind Regards,

Emily Flynn





Michiel Beijen <mich...@beefreeit.nl> 
Sent by: otrs-boun...@otrs.org
27/05/2009 20:33
Please respond to
"User questions and discussions about OTRS." <otrs@otrs.org>


To
"User questions and discussions about OTRS." <otrs@otrs.org>
cc

Subject
Re: [otrs] Max characters per faq






Hi Emily,

You did not mention what FAQ version and database make/model you are 
using, but on MySQL the fields are defined as "text" which makes it not 
able to hold more than 2^16 characters. It will truncate the string and 
not tell you. If you'd save the FAQ article and open it, it will 'only' 
display the first 65000 characters, the rest will be gone...

I have inserted some large chunks of Kafka into new FAQ entries on my test 
environment. The Symptom field is stored in the field called f_field1 on 
the faq_item table, as is defined in Admin > Sysconfig > FAQ > Core::Item 
> FAQ::Item::Field1. The fields are limited at 65535 characters, to be 
precise.

mysql> select length(f_field1) from faq_item;
+------------------+
| length(f_field1) |
+------------------+
|               31 |
|              107 |
|              168 |
|            65535 |
|            65535 |
+------------------+
5 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Then I found this post about the storage capacities of 'text' type fields 
in mysql: http://simonwillison.net/2002/Aug/1/mysqlTextLimits/

That made me wonder if this is present in more places in OTRS:

mysql> select table_name, column_name from information_schema.columns 
where data_type = 'text';
+-------------------+---------------+
| table_name        | column_name   |
+-------------------+---------------+
| article           | a_from        |
| article           | a_reply_to    |
| article           | a_to          |
| article           | a_cc          |
| article           | a_subject     |
| article           | a_message_id  |
| article_search    | a_from        |
| article_search    | a_to          |
| article_search    | a_cc          |
| article_search    | a_subject     |
| article_search    | a_message_id  |
| auto_response     | text0         |
| auto_response     | text1         |
| auto_response     | text2         |
| faq_item          | f_keywords    |
| faq_item          | f_field1      |
| faq_item          | f_field2      |
| faq_item          | f_field3      |
| faq_item          | f_field4      |
| faq_item          | f_field5      |
| faq_item          | f_field6      |
| notifications     | text          |
| salutation        | text          |
| sessions          | session_value |
| signature         | text          |
| standard_response | text          |
+-------------------+---------------+
26 rows in set (0.12 sec)

But as you can see only in places where it makes sense (at least to me) 
the 'text' type is used... except in the faq_item table. Personally, I 
find symptoms of > 65535 bytes a bit long but I think that should be 
possible. Also I think it the Problem and Solution fields should be able 
to handle real long amounts of text and AT LEAST the system should 
complain instead of silently truncating your texts.

As a quick hack, you could change the field type in the database to 
'mediumtext' type which can keep a maximum of 2^32 characters which is 
about 4.294.967.296. 

mysql> alter table `faq_item` change `f_field1` `f_field1` MEDIUMTEXT;
Query OK, 5 rows affected (0.14 sec)
Records: 5  Duplicates: 0  Warnings: 0

You'd probably want to do the same to the fields f_field2 ("Problem") and 
f_field3 ("Solution"). 

The field lenghts are defined in the OPML file which is here: 
ftp://ftp.otrs.org/pub/otrs/packages/FAQ-1.5.4.opm - there you see the 
fields are defined as storing 20000 characters, MySQL then creates them 
with the 'text' datatype.

I would like to ask you if you can file this bug in Bugzilla (
http://bugs.otrs.org) so it may be resolved in the next version of the FAQ 
module. 

Kind regards,
--
Michiel Beijen
Software Consultant
+31 6 - 457 42 418
Bee Free IT + http://beefreeit.nl


On Wed, May 27, 2009 at 17:57, Emily Flynn <emily.fl...@zurichbank.com> 
wrote:

Hi! 

I am inputting a lot of information into the FAQ module at the minute, but 
there seems to be a max amount of characters allowed in the Symptoms 
dialog box.. how can I change this to increase the limit..?  I couldn't 
see anything in the normal sysconfig section. 

Thanks. 


Kind Regards,

Emily Flynn


---------------------------------------------------------------------
OTRS mailing list: otrs - Webpage: http://otrs.org/
Archive: http://lists.otrs.org/pipermail/otrs
To unsubscribe: http://lists.otrs.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/otrs

NEW! ENTERPRISE SUBSCRIPTION - Get more information NOW!
http://www.otrs.com/en/support/enterprise-subscription/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
OTRS mailing list: otrs - Webpage: http://otrs.org/
Archive: http://lists.otrs.org/pipermail/otrs
To unsubscribe: http://lists.otrs.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/otrs

NEW! ENTERPRISE SUBSCRIPTION - Get more information NOW!
http://www.otrs.com/en/support/enterprise-subscription/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
OTRS mailing list: otrs - Webpage: http://otrs.org/
Archive: http://lists.otrs.org/pipermail/otrs
To unsubscribe: http://lists.otrs.org/cgi-bin/listinfo/otrs

NEW! ENTERPRISE SUBSCRIPTION - Get more information NOW!
http://www.otrs.com/en/support/enterprise-subscription/

Reply via email to