John Moore wrote: > We have a need to store text data which typically is just a hundred or so > bytes, but in some cases may extend to a few thousand. Our current field > has a varchar of 1024, which is not large enough. Key data is fixed sized > and much smaller in this same record. > > Our application is primarily transaction oriented, which means that records > will normally be fetched via random access, not sequential scans. > > The question is: what size thresholds exist? I assume that there is a > "page" size over which the record will be split into more than one. What is > that size, and does the spill cost any more or less than I had split the > record into two or more individual records in order to handle the same data? > > Obviously, the easiest thing for me to do is just set the varchar to > something big (say - 10K) but I don't want to do this without understanding > the OLTP performance impact. >
If you don't want a limit, use TEXT. Long values are automatically stored in TOAST tables to avoid performance problems with sequential scans over long row values. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 853-3000 + If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026 ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]