Re: [HACKERS] Re: [SQL] Column name's length

> How about something like this: if the code finds that the names are
> too long when forming an implicit index name, it truncates the names
> to fit, and you are OK as long as the truncated name is unique.
> For example
>
> create table averylongtablename (averylongfieldname serial);
>
> would truncate the input names to produce something like
>
> averylongtable_averylongfie_key
> averylongtable_averylongfie_seq
>
> and you'd only get a failure if those indexes/sequences already existed.
> (Truncating both names as shown above, not just the field name,
> should reduce the probability of collisions.)

This only partially solves the problem and can introduce bugs into code
which is only reading from a database. When someone is setting up the
database to work on the system, they'll in theory get a failure so they
know it won't work. This really isn't true for our software though because
we have functions which dynamically query a table to see what columns it
has. In theory two queries for different longnames can resolve to the same
column name.

It is also a backwards compatibility hassle if you ever want to increase
the number of significant characters in the name. This is because the
existing database only knows the first 32 characters and *must* ignore
anything after that in lookups. You would have to keep track of which names
are "old style" and which are new. Why set yourself up like that?

-Z-