Tag: text

Does varchar(n) use less disk space than varchar() or text?

Some time ago on Slack some person said:

varchar is better (storage efficiency), i recommend using it for less than 2048 chars, for the best : TEXT

There was discussion that followed, the person that claimed this efficiency never backed their claim, saying only that:

VARChar takes much less ‘place' than TEXT … but have to face it to believe it

and when I asked for

Show me db fiddle with queries that show this difference and I'll believe

I got:

HA ha ! i let you dig it  i've some work ….

I reacted (over reacted), and the thread died.

I know (knew?) that varchar/text are the same internally (wrote about it), but perhaps there have been recent change?

Continue reading Does varchar(n) use less disk space than varchar() or text?

Changes on explain.depesz.com – extracted query from auto-explain plans

Some time ago James Courtney reported missing functionality.

Specifically, when one uses auto-explain, logged explains contain query text. So, when such explain is then pasted on explain.depesz.com, it stands to reason that it should be able to extract the query on its own, without having to manually extract it and put it in query box.

It took me a while, but finally, got it working today. And you can see it in all four explain format:

Also, while I'm writing – it seems that somewhere next month, there will be 1 millionth plan uploaded to the site 🙂 Hope you all find it useful 🙂

“= 123” vs. “= ‘depesz'”. What is faster?

There is this idea that normal form in databases require you to use integer, auto incrementing, primary keys.

The idea was discussed by many people, I will just point you to series of three blog posts on the subject by Josh Berkus ( part 1, 2 and 3, and reprise).

One of the points that proponents of surrogate keys (i.e. those based on integer and sequences) raise is that comparing integers is faster than comparing texts. So,

SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = 123

is faster than

SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = 'depesz'

Is it?

Continue reading “= 123" vs. “= ‘depesz'". What is faster?

Waiting for 9.1 – Rewrite-less changing types of column

On 12th of February, Robert Haas committed patch:

Teach ALTER TABLE .. SET DATA TYPE TO avoid SOME TABLE rewrites.
 
WHEN the OLD TYPE IS BINARY coercible TO the NEW TYPE AND the USING     
clause does NOT CHANGE the COLUMN contents, we can avoid a FULL TABLE
rewrite, though any indexes ON the affected COLUMNS will still need
TO be rebuilt.  This applies, FOR example, WHEN changing a VARCHAR
COLUMN TO be OF TYPE text.
 
The prior coding assumed that the SET OF operations that force a
rewrite IS identical TO the SET OF operations that must be propagated
TO TABLES making USE OF the affected TABLE's rowtype.  This is
no longer true: even though the tuples in those tables wouldn't
need TO be modified, the DATA TYPE CHANGE invalidate indexes built
USING those composite TYPE COLUMNS.  Indexes ON the TABLE we're
actually modifying can be invalidated too, of course, but the
existing machinery is sufficient to handle that case.
 
Along the way, add some debugging messages that make it possible
to understand what operations ALTER TABLE is actually performing
in these cases.                                                      
 
Noah Misch and Robert Haas

Later on, on 15th, he committed second patch with few more cases where rewrite can be avoided.

Continue reading Waiting for 9.1 – Rewrite-less changing types of column

CHAR(x) vs. VARCHAR(x) vs. VARCHAR vs. TEXT – UPDATED 2010-03-03

UPDATE

Please read also about this change in Pg 9.1, and this change in Pg 9.2 posts, as they explain that since Pg 9.1 some of the limitations listed in this post are no longer there.

END OF UPDATE

Fight!

But more seriously – people tend to use various data types, and there have been some myths about them, so let's see how it really boils down.

First of all – All those data types are internally saved using the same C data structure – varlena.

Thanks to this we can be nearly sure that there are no performance differences. Are there no performance differences in reality? Let's test.

Continue reading CHAR(x) vs. VARCHAR(x) vs. VARCHAR vs. TEXT – UPDATED 2010-03-03