I want to index the textual representations of a table's rows.
You can cast a row to text by using the name of the table where you would usually use the name of a column, like "table_name::text". But this is not immutable and so can't be used in an expression index.
I can easily make a pl/perl function which does the same thing as the text cast, and label it as immutable and use it in an index. But are the dangers of doing this?
I know that configuration changes to the date and time formats could change the way that the data is shown in ways that would cause the rows inserted under a different configuration to be missed. That doesn't bother me.
I know that if I drop a table column, the contents of the column will still be in the index. That doesn't bother me either, as all the indexes I plan to use are lossy and so will do a recheck anyway.
What other problems am I setting myself up for by doing this?
Cheers,
Jeff
