Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
> there is a constituency that cares --- mainly people who use
> client-side code that tends to fall over if it doesn't see a
> suitable maxlength attached to query result columns.
I suspect it will primarily be software which is dealing with large
enough result sets that reading through it all to find the maximum
width for a column in a particular request is not viable. It's also
likely to be more of an issue with software which needs to work with
multiple database products. Finally, it simplifies life for
application developers who want a form or report to have columns which
are wide enough to handle the data which might show up, when they
don't want the column widths to change from run to run -- as when
daily reports will be added to a binder.
> The first example I came across in the archives was
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-sql/2002-06/msg00235.php
It's not surprising that we got a post about Crystal Reports having an
issue; all of the above applies to it.
-Kevin
