Bruce Momjian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > I think it would be good to see if we can extend the varlena data types > to support a shorter header for storing short byte values. Looking at > the header now we have:
This isn't the first time we've been down that route. There were some extensive discussions a while back. I think there were even patches. I don't remember why it was eventually rejected. I suspect it simply got too complex. But I think this is a dead-end route. What you're looking at is the number "1" repeated for *every* record in the table. And what your proposing amounts to noticing that the number "4" fits in a byte and doesn't need a whole word to store it. Well sure, but you don't even need a byte if it's going to be the same for every record in the table. If someone popped up on the list asking about whether Postgres compressed their data efficiently if they stored a column that was identical throughout the whole table you would tell them to normalize their data. -- greg ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster