public inbox for [email protected]  
help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Gregory Stark <[email protected]>
To: Heikki Linnakangas <[email protected]>
Cc: Juho Saarikko <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: BUG #3965: UNIQUE constraint fails on long column values
Date: Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:51:47 +0000
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
References: <[email protected]>
	<[email protected]>
	<[email protected]>
	<[email protected]>

"Heikki Linnakangas" <[email protected]> writes:

"Heikki Linnakangas" <[email protected]> writes:

> Gregory Stark wrote:
>> "Heikki Linnakangas" <[email protected]> writes:
>>
>>> As others have pointed out, CREATE UNIQUE INDEX i ON ((md5(column)) is a pretty
>>> good work-around.
>>
>> Unless you need cryptographic security I would not suggest using MD5. MD5 is
>> intentionally designed to take a substantial amount of CPU resources to
>> calculate.
>
> Return type of hash* functions is just 32 bits. I wonder if that's wide enough
> to avoid accidental collisions? Depends on the application of course...

Oh, I missed that you were suggesting a UNIQUE index. That seems unsafe to me
even for md5 or its ilk. But that would depend on the application too.

-- 
  Gregory Stark
  EnterpriseDB          http://www.enterprisedb.com
  Ask me about EnterpriseDB's RemoteDBA services!



view thread (20+ messages)  latest in thread

reply

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Reply to all the recipients using the --to and --cc options:
  reply via email

  To: [email protected]
  Cc: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
  Subject: Re: BUG #3965: UNIQUE constraint fails on long column values
  In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

This inbox is served by agora; see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox