Re: [RFC] new digest datatypes, or generic fixed-len hex types? - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Merlin Moncure wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 10:20 AM, Tom Lane<tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>   
>> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com> writes:
>>     
>>> We've developed some code to implement fixed-length datatypes for well
>>> known digest function output (MD5, SHA1 and the various SHA2 types).
>>> These types have minimal overhead and are quite complete, including
>>> btree and hash opclasses.
>>>       
>>> We're wondering about proposing them for inclusion in pgcrypto.
>>>       
>> Wasn't this proposed and rejected before?  (Or more to the point,
>> why'd you bother?  The advantage over bytea seems negligible.)
>>     
>
> well, one nice things about the fixed length types is that you can
> keep your table from needing a toast table when you have a bytea in
> it.
>
>
>   

Can't you just set storage on the column to MAIN to stop it being stored 
in a toast table?

cheers

andrew