Re: Gradual migration from integer to bigint?

On Sun, Oct  1, 2023 at 05:30:39AM -0400, Ann Harrison wrote:
> Other databases do allow that sort of gradual migration.  One example
> has an internal table of record descriptions indexed the table identifier 
> and a description number.  Each record includes a header with various 
> useful bits including its description number. When reading a record, 
> the system notes the description number and looks up the description 
> before parsing the record into columns.  
> 
> The transition is made easier if the database indexes are generic - 
> for example, numbers rather than decimal[12,6], int32, etc., and string 
> rather than varchar[12].   That way, increasing a column size doesn't
> require re-indexing.
> 
> But, those are decision that really had to be made early - making
> a major format change 25+ years in would break too much.

And the performance sounds terrible.  ;-)

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        https://momjian.us
  EDB                                      https://enterprisedb.com

  Only you can decide what is important to you.