String lengths in the SQL backend

[Paul Schwartz]

I've worked with several accounting packages, and I would find it very strange if someone could not adapt their procedures to live with 32 for the length of the account code.

Paul


--- On Wed, 11/12/08, Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com> wrote:

> From: Phil Longstaff <plongstaff at rogers.com>
> Subject: String lengths in the SQL backend
> To: "Gnucash list" <gnucash-devel at lists.gnucash.org>, gnucash-user at lists.gnucash.org
> Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008, 8:24 AM
> For those on the gnucash user list, a new SQL backend is in
> development.  An 
> issue has arisen, and I need to get input from users, not
> just developers.
> 
> Rolf Leggewie has run into some problems with the SQL
> backend 
> (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=560165) - he
> wants to add another 
> SQL table to key off the account 'code' field. 
> However, the 'code' field is 
> varchar(2048) which is too big to be a primary key in
> mysql.  I responded that 
> earlier discussion on this mailing list (mainly/only by
> Derek) had been that 
> strings should be unlimited, and since SQL requires *some*
> limit, I chose 
> 2048.
> 
> For those who don't know SQL, for a variable length
> string (varchar), the 
> database engine will only allocate enough space to hold the
> value, so allowing 
> 2048 and storing only 10 chars uses about the same disk
> space as allowing 128 
> and storing the same 10.  The problem in this case is that
> one user wants to 
> be able to index some more information by the account code,
> but the fields used 
> as the index is too large.
> 
> I'd have to look back, but I think Derek's reply
> was the only one.  I'd like 
> to open the topic again, because of Rolf's problem. 
> Can anyone think of a 
> reason that account code size limit cannot be reduced to a
> smaller value (e.g. 
> 32)?   Will anyone ever enter an account code longer than
> that?
> 
> Phil
> 
> 
> 
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