Re: [HACKERS] interesting observatation regarding views and V7.0

Don Baccus <dhogaza@pacifier.com> writes:
>> Something else we might consider as a stopgap is to resurrect the
>> "compressed text" datatype that Jan wrote, and then removed in
>> anticipation of having TOAST.

> Also...interbase's "text" type is apparently compressed, and that's
> an interesting idea for "text" itself (as opposed to "varchar()" of
> a given size).   Someone who just says "text" probably wants to be
> able to stuff as much text into the column as possible, I know
> I do!

Just quietly make text compressed-under-the-hood, you mean?  Hmm.
Interesting idea, all right, and it wouldn't create any long-term
compatibility problem since users couldn't see it directly.  I think
we might have some places in the system that assume char/varchar/text
all have the same internal representation, but that could probably
be fixed without too much grief.

> The price of compression/decompression is to some extent
> balanced by not having to drag as many bytes around during joins
> and sorts and the like.

Also, there could be a threshold: don't bother trying to compress
fields that are less than, say, 1K bytes.

Jan, what do you think?  I might be able to find some time to try this,
if you approve of the idea but just don't have cycles to spare.
        regards, tom lane