[SOLVED] Re: Altering a column type - Most efficient way

On Fri, 2008-07-11 at 09:55 -0500, Kevin Grittner wrote:
> > Alvaro Herrera  writes:
> >>> Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> >>> If it were this simple a change, I'm not certain why (I believe) PG
> >>>is checking each and every row to see if it will fit into the new column
> >>> definition/type. 
> >Because the code that does the ALTER TYPE is very generic, and it
> > doesn't (yet) have an optimization that tells it to skip the check
> > and the possible table rewrite in the cases where it's obviously not
> >needed(like this one).

>  If there's some low-hanging fruit here, +1 for getting that.  

I just tested this out and everything seems to be working fine. (cross
fingers - for now and if I do report back, it means we've crashed and
burned, but as of now... the low hanging fruit is tasty)

This 2 sec change is much preferred over the 3+ hour per table.

I agree with Tom that this is not useful in _all_ cases and may seem to
look like a hack, but it really isn't. Given that the condition that
we're expaning the min length rather than the opposite, it should be
pretty safe.


Guys(/gals) Thanks very much for brightening up a dreadry Monday
morning.