Postgres 7.1 and the 8k tuple / row limit
Hey all,
I've developed a full-text, news article database in Postgres with Perl and
the Pg module as my search front end. The only problem (that I discovered
AFTER I'd done all my dev work) is that Postgres has an 8K row limit. About
3% of my articles exceed this size limit.
I've tried splitting the articles into three separate rows (which are then
joined with '||' when performing a query) but this is far too slow without
cluster indexing.
Recompiling Postgres with a larger row size limit is not an option and
anyway, the decision is not mine.
However, I've read that Postgres 7.1 / 7.2 will accomodate larger row sizes
and was wondering if there was a ballpark ETA / release date for them. And
does anybody know which version will have this feature?
The reason I ask is that I might hang around waiting for these releases
rather than stick with my current plan of cutting my losses and switching to
DB2.
Cheers.
Ally
ally@nospam.netspace.net.au
PS: Remove 'nospam' from e-mail address to reply.
On Sun, Oct 08, 2000 at 01:17:45PM +1000, Ally wrote:
I've developed a full-text, news article database in Postgres with Perl and
the Pg module as my search front end. The only problem (that I discovered
AFTER I'd done all my dev work) is that Postgres has an 8K row limit. About
3% of my articles exceed this size limit.However, I've read that Postgres 7.1 / 7.2 will accomodate larger row sizes
and was wondering if there was a ballpark ETA / release date for them. And
does anybody know which version will have this feature?
It will be in 7.1, which introduces TOAST (basically, support for
long tuples). It's also in the current CVS sources. I really have no
idea when the official release date is, but I'm guessing a beta
sometime in October, and a release in November? But that's a guess
from a PgSQL user, not developer - I'd recommend waiting for a
developer to get back to you.
IMHO, you have 2 choices. Use Large Objects, or wait for TOAST. I'm
writing a similar application to yours, and I've decided to use
TOAST and do my development on a pre-7.1 snapshot copy. It's very
stable (for a development snapshot - I haven't been running it in
production), and a number of annoying bugs have been fixed. I haven't
had any problems at all.
HTH,
Neil
--
Neil Conway <neilconway@home.com>
Get my GnuPG key from: http://klamath.dyndns.org/mykey.asc
Encrypted mail welcomed
I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right
to say it.
-- Voltaire
"Ally" <ally@nospam.netspace.net.au> writes:
However, I've read that Postgres 7.1 / 7.2 will accomodate larger row sizes
and was wondering if there was a ballpark ETA / release date for them. And
does anybody know which version will have this feature?
7.1 for sure; the feature has been working in development sources for
months.
7.1 release date is not set yet, but you could reasonably do development
work with a current snapshot. Wouldn't want to trust a snapshot with
mission-critical data, but for devel work it's plenty solid enough.
regards, tom lane
Where can I download the 7.1 snapshot?
Thanks
Douglas
On 9 Oct 2000 23:46:29 -0400, tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us (Tom Lane) wroth:
Show quoted text
"Ally" <ally@nospam.netspace.net.au> writes:
However, I've read that Postgres 7.1 / 7.2 will accomodate larger row sizes
and was wondering if there was a ballpark ETA / release date for them. And
does anybody know which version will have this feature?7.1 for sure; the feature has been working in development sources for
months.7.1 release date is not set yet, but you could reasonably do development
work with a current snapshot. Wouldn't want to trust a snapshot with
mission-critical data, but for devel work it's plenty solid enough.regards, tom lane