Re: When is an explicit cast necessary?

Alan Millington wrote:
>
> As far as I remember, when I was using Postgres 8.1.4 that worked, but
> under Postgres 8.4.1 it results in the errors "Returned type integer
> does not match expected type smallint" and "Returned type unknown does
> not match expected type character".
>

There was a major breaking change to how casting is handled in 8.3.
Some good reading about what happened:

http://www.depesz.com/index.php/2008/05/05/error-operator-does-not-exist-integer-text-how-to-fix-it/
http://petereisentraut.blogspot.com/2008/03/readding-implicit-casts-in-postgresql.html

--
Greg Smith  2ndQuadrant US  Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg@2ndQuadrant.com   www.2ndQuadrant.us