From: Gary Stainburn <gary.stainburn@ringways.co.uk>
Organization: Ringways Garages Ltd
To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: alter table alter column to resize a varchar
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2012 16:09:22 +0100
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Cc: Craig James <cjames@emolecules.com>
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On Thursday 27 September 2012 15:49:53 Craig James wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 2:23 AM, Gary Stainburn
>
> <gary.stainburn@ringways.co.uk> wrote:
> > Hi folks.
> >
> > I'm planning on extending a field in one of my main tables using:
> >
> > alter table stock alter column type varchar(255);
>
> Why not just do
>
>    alter table stock alter column  type text;
>
> That is, do you really need a limit?  The VARCHAR type in Postgress is
> just a TEXT type with an additional test to limit data to 255
> characters.  It doesn't save space to limit the length.
>

I had an arbitary limit of 80 to keep the data managable within the 
applications. Now that limit is insufficient it may be worth re-evaluating 
the requirement.

> > to extend it from the current varchar(80).  My concern is that this table
> > and this field is used in a number of views, and views of views.
> >
> > Are then any gotchas that I need to worry about or things I need to
> > check, or will it just work?
>
> You can't alter a table that has dependent views.
>
>   => alter table foo alter t type varchar(255);
>   ERROR:  cannot alter type of a column used by a view or rule
>   DETAIL:  rule _RETURN on view fooview depends on column "t"
>
> I keep scripts around to rebuild all of my views when necessary. If I
> keep the scripts up to date, it make me much more willing to make a
> schema change instead of putting it off until things are really messy.

I have similar scripts for most of my scripts, but wasn't sure if I'd have to 
use them. Looks like I will, so I'll have to check that they're up-to-date.

Thanks for the help Craig


-- 
Gary Stainburn
Group I.T. Manager
Ringways Garages
http://www.ringways.co.uk