Re: Support allocating memory for large strings

On 8/11/25 3:15, Maxim Zibitsker wrote:
> PostgreSQL's MaxAllocSize limit prevents storing individual variable-length character strings exceeding ~1GB, causing "invalid memory alloc request size" errors during INSERT operations on tables with large text columns. Example reproduction included in artifacts.md.

Tom Lane's very appropriate response not withstanding....

a) Why is this a problem? (Please share a bit more about your intended
use case)

b) Why would someone need to store >1GB worth of TEXT (in a single
string, no less!) in a column in an (albeit very flexible) Relational
Database ?

    (I'm assuming no internal structure that would allow such amount of
text to be split/spread over multiple records)

c) There exists LObs (Large OBjects) intended for this use, precisely...
why is this mechanism not a good solution to your need?

d) Wouldn't a (journalling) File System (with a slim abstraction layer
on top for directory hashing/indexing) not be a better solution for this
particular application?

    Full Text Search on the stored data doesn't look like it would ever
be performant... there exist specialized tools for that

And... how did you get "invalid" data in the database, that pg_dump
wouldn't process, in the first place? (maybe just speculating/projecting
and I didn't pick up the nuance properly)

Mostly curious about the problem / intended use case.... when we
explored limits and limitations in Postgres almost 15 years ago, we
never considered this even :o

Thanks,

--
Parkinson's Law: Work expands to fill the time alloted to it.