Re: [QUESTIONS] DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

Redirected to 'the proper list' - pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org

On Mon, 9 Mar 1998, Bruce Momjian wrote:

> >
> > WARNING!
> >
> > Postgres 6.3 has MAJOR trouble with btree-indexed text fields.
> >
> > Performance levels are *10x* worse than the same indexed fields in "varchar"
> > format!
> >
> > Be EXTREMELY careful - I got bit in the ass by this this morning, and it was
> > very fortunate that I figured out what was going on.
> >
> > The reason I changed this over was that I had dumped the table and it came
> > out of the pg_dump program with a negative size. So I figured I'd change it
> > to TEXT and that would resolve the problem. BIG mistake.
> >
> > Be on guard for this folks.
> >
> > Developers, you might want to look into this - there's no good reason for
> > this kind of behavior, is there?
>
> No good reason at all. As far as I know, text and varchar() behave
> identically in the backend, except for the input functions which limit
> the length of varchar.

Karl...just curious, but what does an 'explain' show for the two
different situations? 10x worse almost sounds like the indices aren't
even being used, don't they?