> Are there any reasons for not using the “text” type whenever a variable
> length string field is needed? Are there penalties in disk usage,
> memory usage or performance?
>
>
>
> What are the differences between declaring something “varchar” or
> “varchar(n)” or “text”? (I realize that the middle one has an upper
> limit while the others do not.)
Actually, no, there's no reason to use varchar over text, unless you are
wanting to explicitly limit the input length of your data.
Internally, Postgres treats a VARCHAR(n) as a TEXT with a CHECK
constraint applied to it, so VARCHAR is going to be slightly slower to use.
Hope that helps,
Aurynn.
--
Aurynn Shaw
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc. 1.503.667.4564 ext 103
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support
ashaw@commandprompt.com