Re: Making a varchar bigger

Specificaly I am looking at executing something like this:

UPDATE pg_attribute SET atttypmod = 16 where attname = 'x' AND attrelid =
(select pg_class.oid from pg_class where relname = 'mytable');

On December 23, 2004 05:13 pm, Derik Barclay wrote:
> Hello Group,
>
> I've run into a bit of a problem, I have a varchar(6) field that I now need
> to have as a varchar(12).
>
> I am relatively new to postgres and am unsure how best to do this. What I
> would like to do is alter the meta-data directly. Change the value of
> atttypmod in pg_attribute directly. Initial tests look good, however I am
> unsure how safe this is. Or what else needs to be done? does it need to be
> re-indexed?
>
> I have looked at the sections on renaming/changing columns, though this is
> more a solid an option, I am dealing with millions of records and the
> downtime for the backfill is not acceptable.
>
> I found some old post in here hinting at doing this, however the links in
> them are now dead.

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Derik Barclay <dbarclay@givex.com>, Systems Software Engineer
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