Default setting of NAMEDATALEN

Hi there,
my question is short, quite simple and
definately a hacker thing (hopefully).

FIRST of all:
POSTGRES is a great database system! Thanks
a lot for your perfect work.

Now my Question:
Wouldn't it be possible to change the
default setting of NAMEDATALEN in
all distributions to a higher value,
lets say 128?

Or a bit better:
Get the length of NAMEDATALEN by a
select statement for all applications
using postgres beeing a bit more flexible?

Reason:
I think that there are several systems out
there running with higher values to make
reading (and understanding) table- and
rownames a bit easier.

All linux packages are compiled with that standard
value as well as all applications (like psqlodbc eg)
are actually designed - also by default - for a length
of 32, so changing NAMEDATALEN and recompiling
postgreql does'nt solve anything, afterwards you
have to contact odbc-developers, tool-developers
and so on for a hint how to make their systems
cope with that new value.

Regarding decreasing cpu-speed and increasing hardware
cost, shouldn't it be possible to set a higher value
for NAMEDATALEN by default, so that especially complex
postgres-databases can be developed on a standard compilation,
and the development of applications would be made a bit more
comfortable?

Regards and thanks for your time

jochen

New NAMEDATALEN default will be 64 in 7.3. We are in beta now. We did
see performance hit with values greater than 64. It is too hard to make
it changeable after compilation.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jochen Westland wrote:
> Hi there,
> my question is short, quite simple and
> definately a hacker thing (hopefully).
>
> FIRST of all:
> POSTGRES is a great database system! Thanks
> a lot for your perfect work.
>
> Now my Question:
> Wouldn't it be possible to change the
> default setting of NAMEDATALEN in
> all distributions to a higher value,
> lets say 128?
>
> Or a bit better:
> Get the length of NAMEDATALEN by a
> select statement for all applications
> using postgres beeing a bit more flexible?
>
> Reason:
> I think that there are several systems out
> there running with higher values to make
> reading (and understanding) table- and
> rownames a bit easier.
>
> All linux packages are compiled with that standard
> value as well as all applications (like psqlodbc eg)
> are actually designed - also by default - for a length
> of 32, so changing NAMEDATALEN and recompiling
> postgreql does'nt solve anything, afterwards you
> have to contact odbc-developers, tool-developers
> and so on for a hint how to make their systems
> cope with that new value.
>
> Regarding decreasing cpu-speed and increasing hardware
> cost, shouldn't it be possible to set a higher value
> for NAMEDATALEN by default, so that especially complex
> postgres-databases can be developed on a standard compilation,
> and the development of applications would be made a bit more
> comfortable?
>
> Regards and thanks for your time
>
> jochen
>
>
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