Re: tuples too big

> I've got a problem - I need a little help. I'm using 6.5.3 from Debian
> stable.
> I've got a database, which has some fields in one table that need to hold a
> fair bit of text (say, 8000-10,000+ characters). Right now, I've got those
> fields as simple text.

[ Martin suggests breaking up the large values by hand ]

Another answer is to update to 7.0.3, and redeclare your large fields as
'lztext'. This is a hack that is going away in 7.1 (it's superseded by
the more general TOAST feature), but it should buy you the extra couple
of K you need for now. A rough rule of thumb is that LZ compression
will save a factor of 2 or so on chunks of text.

A third possibility is to increase BLCKSZ from 8K to 32K, but that
requires a rebuild from source, so you might not want to mess with that
if you're accustomed to using RPMs.

These two answers are obviously hacks, so I'd agree with Martin's
approach if there were no better way on the horizon. But with 7.1
nearly out the door, I think it's silly to expend a lot of programming
effort to split up and reassemble records; the need for that will go
away as soon as you migrate to 7.1. What you want right now is a quick
and easy stopgap.

regards, tom lane