"Dann Corbit" <DCorbit@connx.com> writes:
> I'm sure that this is an idiotic thing to say, but why not just make it
> varchar?
The main reason NAME is a fixed-length datatype is that we'd have to
rewrite (and make slower) a lot of catalog-accessing code that expects
to be able to access other fields in catalog tuples at fixed offsets.
I do not think it's worth it.
Also, the existing performance bottlenecks look to me to be associated
with assumptions that NAME is fixed-length. To convert to varlena NAME,
we'd still have to fix all that code.
regards, tom lane