Re: Converting MySQL tinyint to PostgreSQL

Tom Lane  writes:

> Certainly the idea of not having to store a length word for CHAR(1) fields
> is not going to inspire anyone to invest the effort involved ;-)

That's a pretty big motivation though. Storage space efficiency is a huge
factor in raw sequential scan speed.

Personally I would settle for a fuller set of small fixed size datatypes. The
"char" datatype is pretty much exactly what's needed except that it provides
such a quirky interface. 

I'm not sure exactly how to clean it up but if it were more user-friendly (and
had less of an "undocumented internal feature" character to it) I have a
feeling a lot of people would be using for things like flags, state codes,
etc. And it would reduce storage space significantly over having lots of text
or even integer fields.

-- 
greg