Re: text field

At 01:35 PM 1/29/02 -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
>Raphael,
>
>> I need to put a field in a database that will hold a login for the
>> users.
>> That login is rather long (it's their e-mail address) and of variable
>> length (I can't change that :-).
>> I thought of using the text type, but wondered what were the
>> implications in terms of speed and amount of data (does it use much
>> more space than othe character types?)
>
>Not in PostgreSQL. However, you may find that some interfaces (such as
> ODBC and JDBC) put limits on waht you can do with a Text column. For
> example, MS Access/ODBC will interpret a TEXT field (or and VARCHAR
> over 250 chars) as a "memo" field and refuse to let you search or
> aggregate on the field.
>
>Otherwise, TEXT and VARCHAR perform the same in PostgreSQL.

Almost the same? I read recently that VARCHAR(n) has a minor overhead on
UPDATE to enforce the max length.