> > A trick you can use in 7.0.* to squeeze out a little more space is
> > to declare your large text fields as "lztext" --- this invokes
> > inline compression, which might get you a factor of 2 or so on typical
> > mail messages. lztext will go away again in 7.1, since TOAST supersedes
> > it,
>
> Uh, why. Does TOAST do automatic compression? If people need to store
> huge blocks of text (like a DNA sequence) inline compression isn't just
> a hack to squeeze bigger text into a tuple.
I'd guess that it's a speed issue. Decompressing everything in the table
for every select sounds like a great waste of CPU power, to me, especially
when hard drives and RAM are cheap. Kind of like the idea of "drivespace"
on Windows - nice idea, but it slowed things down quite a bit.
steve