Re: [Bug-gnupedia] Storing large data elements

[Rob Scott]

--- Bryce Harrington <address@hidden> wrote: > On
Sun, 21 Jan 2001, [iso-8859-1] Rob Scott wrote:
> 
> > The default table type on MySQL is MyISAM, and it
> is
> > most commonly used as a static table, which is
> faster
> > than a dynamic table for most corcumstances, and
> > usually files arent spread all over the fs, unless
> you
> > use the dynamic system.
> > 
> > So to answer your question, i dont think they do.
> 
> This is a good argument for not putting all of the
> text in
> the database itself, directly.  Not the only
> argument, nor
> necessarily the best one, but definitely a
> legitimate one.
> 
> However, in fact MySQL *does* have the capability
> for this.
> Or at least, I found mention of it in the O'Reilly
> MySQL
> manual (page 237).  MySQL appears to have several
> different
> data types for strings.  For instance:
> 
> CHAR(len)    fixed
> VARCHAR(len) 255
> TINYTEXT     255 chars
> TEXT         64KB
> MEDIUMTEXT   16MB
> LONGTEXT     4GB
> 
> That said, not all databases are able to store long
> runs of 
> text, and I do not know how well supported these
> data types
> are by DBI, JDBC, ODBC, etc.  There may be other
> issues
> (like performance) as well.  
> 
> Bryce
> 
> 
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They are all supported in DBI, and MySQL handles them
as a form of BLOB that it stored external to the
actual main db file.   I worked out that if we used a
MEDIUMTEXT field, allowing on average 6 letters per
word, we would be able to store a document of over 2
million words, which should easily be enough.  
Perhaps we should even think of moving to a TEXT?


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