Increase the length of identifers from 63 characters to 128 characters or more

From: Peter Burbery <petercullenburbery(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: pgsql-hackers(at)lists(dot)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Increase the length of identifers from 63 characters to 128 characters or more
Date: 2024-05-06 12:49:51
Message-ID: CAD3bK_zpCj7F+gs9HJ8LMmn_sSqeFAyAA_+CQxaeeHXnQsdv-A@mail.gmail.com
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One-line Summary: There are use cases for long table names so people might
use Oracle and MS SQL Server because Postgres does not support table names
longer than 63 characters, so the max character limit should be increased
to 128 or higher.

Business Use-case: I want to create a table
named things_that_take_up_a_lot_of_storage_and_space_on_a_computer_and_hard_drive
of 75 characters. I also want to create a column
named thing_that_takes_up_a_lot_of_storage_and_space_on_a_computer_and_hard_drive_id
of 78 characters. People have asked for this feature before. For more
details, please see and visit
https://www.reddit.com/r/PostgreSQL/comments/6kyyev/i_have_hit_the_table_name_length_limit_a_number/.
In particular, see
https://www.reddit.com/r/PostgreSQL/comments/6kyyev/i_have_hit_the_table_name_length_limit_a_number/#:~:text=been%20wondering%20the%20same
which states I've been wondering the same. It comes down to changing
NAMEDATALEN documented here:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/runtime-config-preset.html and
someone made a patch that changes it to 256 characters:
https://gist.github.com/langner/5c7bc1d74a8b957cab26

The Postgres people seem to be resistant to changing this. I accept that
where possible one should keep identifiers short but descriptive but I
haven't seen a good reason WHY it shouldn't be changed since there are many
instances when remaining within 63 characters is quite difficult.

Sincerely,

Peter Burbery

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