Re: VARIANT / ANYTYPE datatype

On 05/04/2011 01:36 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>
>> The main idea is to be able to store column values in an audit table
>> like this:
>> old_value variant
>> new_value variant
>> Currently, they use text for old_value and new_value, but this is, of
>> course, not very satisfactory.
> Just out of curiosity, what actual functionality gain would ensue over
> just using text? It seems like doing anything useful with the audit
> table contents would still require casting the column to text, or the
> moral equivalent of that.
>

Yeah, I've been down this road once or twice, and I think that's the $64
question.

I wrote a custom audit app two or three years ago. After several
iterations the customer and I found that using an hstore for the old/new
(or old record / changeset, which is what we actually use) was the most
suitable for our use.

I think if we did this we'd need to add some sort of is_type() and
typeof() functions for variant objects.

cheers

andrew