couple of general questions - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Culley Harrelson
Subject couple of general questions
Date
Msg-id 20010119002944.46487.qmail@web9602.mail.yahoo.com
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: couple of general questions
List pgsql-general
Hi,

I am in the process of developing my first database
with PostgreSQL and was hoping to find help with a few
questions:

1.  Is it possible to use syntax like "if object
exists then drop it" before running your ddl
statements?  Which system table do you hit?

2.  In the documentation it says that of the character
data types text is best, over varchar().  Why is this?
What if any are the benefits of using an array data
type over, say, a child table holding all the values
of the array?

3.  OK the CLUSTER statement.  Say you cluster on the
last name of an employee table.  When you then do an
insert into this table for someone named Smith is the
record logically written between the R's and the T's?
Just need to verify this is right :)

4.  Lastly I wanted to confirm that the best way to
regularly run a piece of sql is to schedule a OS
script to handle it.  Is this right?

Thanks for any help!

Culley

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