Thread: 2 very newbie questions

Hi

The Postgresql manual is rather huge so I would appreciate it if you could help me with the following 2 questions:

What is an oid when creating tables and what is the purpose of it?

What is a toast table?

Thanks

H.F.

On 01/19/2012 12:04 PM, Heine Ferreira wrote:
> Hi
>
> The Postgresql manual is rather huge so I would appreciate it if you
> could help me with the following 2 questions:
>
> What is an oid when creating tables and what is the purpose of it?

oid stands for Object ID. A long time ago they where used as a quick and
dirty way to generate unique sequences for a table. The use of oids in a
public table is now deprecated. If you want a unique sequence use the
serial type.

>
> What is a toast table?

It is an auxiliary table that stores information for fields when the
size of the data in the field exceeds certain limits. This does not
apply to all data types.
Better description here:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/static/storage-toast.html

>
> Thanks
>
> H.F.
>


--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@gmail.com