Received: from malur.postgresql.org ([217.196.149.56]) by arkaria.postgresql.org with esmtps (TLS1.3:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1miLLg-0000XM-Nu for pgsql-docs@arkaria.postgresql.org; Wed, 03 Nov 2021 18:51:00 +0000 Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=malur.postgresql.org) by malur.postgresql.org with esmtp (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1miLLf-0006Ox-Ep for pgsql-docs@arkaria.postgresql.org; Wed, 03 Nov 2021 18:50:59 +0000 Received: from magus.postgresql.org ([2a02:c0:301:0:ffff::29]) by malur.postgresql.org with esmtps (TLS1.3:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1miLLf-0006Om-7v for pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org; Wed, 03 Nov 2021 18:50:59 +0000 Received: from sss.pgh.pa.us ([66.207.139.130]) by magus.postgresql.org with esmtps (TLS1.3:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1miLLc-0004BN-8x for pgsql-docs@lists.postgresql.org; Wed, 03 Nov 2021 18:50:58 +0000 Received: from sss1.sss.pgh.pa.us (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sss.pgh.pa.us (8.15.2/8.15.2) with ESMTP id 1A3Iol0I142191; Wed, 3 Nov 2021 14:50:47 -0400 From: Tom Lane To: Grega Jesih cc: "David G. Johnston" , "grega.jesih@gmail.com" , Pg Docs Subject: Re: text fields and performance for ETL In-reply-to: References: <163594615980.678.1904941309603792278@wrigleys.postgresql.org> <686716cb5c4242c28e5967d9b6fcfc75@actual-it.si>,<137264.1635961048@sss.pgh.pa.us> Comments: In-reply-to Grega Jesih message dated "Wed, 03 Nov 2021 18:09:28 -0000" MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-ID: <142189.1635965447.1@sss.pgh.pa.us> Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Date: Wed, 03 Nov 2021 14:50:47 -0400 Message-ID: <142190.1635965447@sss.pgh.pa.us> List-Id: List-Help: List-Subscribe: List-Post: List-Owner: List-Archive: Archived-At: Precedence: bulk Grega Jesih writes: > It matters a lot. It means time saving. Plenty of time. So we're talking= performance. Not postgres performance, interface performance. One more time: our docs are here to explain Postgres performance. It is very easy to show that char/varchar are strictly worse than text so far as Postgres is concerned. Other tools need to document their own performance considerations in their own docs. Now, if you have a *semantic* consideration, like "a state abbreviation should be exactly two characters", those datatypes might help you with enforcing that. But that's not a performance consideration. regards, tom lane