I'm creating a plugin that requires a large text field. In MySQL, this will be TINYTEXT, in Oracle, a VARCHAR(2000) will suffice.

What datatype should I specify in the plugin installation definition to ensure database independence?

TEXT?

Cheers

Andy (mod)
andy@ultranerds.co.uk

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I though of that. It's supported on MySQL, SQL Server and PostgreSQL, but not Oracle.

I guess my real question is: "do the Plugin installer modules do any intelligent conversion depending on which database driver is being used". If it simply passes the datatype through unchanged then I need to find a common datatype that will support large text columns. As far as I can see, there is no such thing.

How do the initial main installers handle it?

In case anyone's interested:

I just tested it on an Oracle installation and the plugin installation modules magically converts the MySQL datatypes TEXT TINYTEXT MEDIUMTEXT etc to CLOBS.

I don't have access to SQL Server ot PostgreSQL, but I'm guessing it will work the same.

Very clever... makes it nice and easy for me. :)

Hi,

Yes, the GT::SQL libs will automatically select the most appropriate type depending on the database. You can see what it will pick by looking at GT/SQL/Driver/*.pm.

Cheers,

Alex
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