[vox-tech] Altering Columns in MySQL on RedHat

[Marc Elliot Hall]

Jeff Newmiller wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Dec 2003, Marc Elliot Hall wrote:
> 
> 
>>I've got a RedHat 8 box running MySQL 3.23.55. One of my tables has a 
>>field with 'varchar(250)' as the data type.
>>
<snippage>
> I think you should reconsider this from a design perspective... making a
> very long field the primary key is inefficient in space (the primary key
> index gets really big) and you have to specify all of those characters
> when you want to find a specific record again.
> 
> I don't know whether MySQL can index BLOB fields anyway... most
> DBMSs won't even allow you to try.

I 100% agree. This is actually a stopgap measure while I implement a 
completely new design for the database (using PostgreSQL as the RDBMS). 
In the meantime, though, the customer needs more space in that field; 
so, I oblige :^)