Re: Datatypes and performance

On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 02:22:39PM -0700, Maksim Likharev wrote:
> Ok, what I see here tells me that text is slower then fixed len varchar,
> due to stored in separate table ( but how else you can store long fields
> ).

No, sorry, I think I was unclear.  varchar() is the same thing as
text(); they'll be the same assuming the same length.

If you go over the length for TOAST (1k?  2k?  It's in the docs, I
think, but I can't recall where) then you'll get it TOASTed.  But
that's true for most (all?  I seem to recall so -- I don't have my
local copy of the docs here) datatypes.  One way to avoid running
over that is to use varchar(n), for some small-enough value of n.
But then you pay with overhead on every insert, because you have to
check the length.

A

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