Re: max length of sql select statement ?

On Mon, 2003-07-07 at 17:57, mallah@trade-india.com wrote: 
> Depending on ur original problem EXISTS or IN may be usable
> EXISTS is efficient and IN can be used efficiently in 7.4 version
> of postgresql

Could be a solution?!
The question is - how long could the IN be?

I mean, if I write something like: 
SELECT * FROM table WHERE columnX IN ('a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', ... ); 
How long can the collection (list) within IN be? Also thousands of
elements?

And what means efficient? Goes the DB only once through the table?

Cheers, Markus