Mark <mark(at)zserve(dot)com> writes:
> Even the postgresql documentation asserts something similar to this:
You're reading obsolete documentation. There is no such assertion
(as far as I can find, anyway) in the 7.1 documentation. The speed
advantage of bpchar --- which was always extremely marginal anyway,
if it was real at all when you consider I/O costs --- is gone completely
now, because with TOAST in the picture the system cannot assume that
bpchar is fixed length on disk.
regards, tom lane