Dirk Mika <Dirk(dot)Mika(at)mikatiming(dot)de> writes:
> 3. The column ratified is of type character varying(1). Why is it casted to text?
Type varchar in Postgres is a poor stepchild without any operators
of its own. Text is the "native" string type and any comparison etc
will require casting varchar to text first. It happens that the
expression decompilation code will show you those implicit casts
explicitly, but they don't really mean much.
regards, tom lane