2

I have a table like this:

CREATE TABLE BLOG(
   CATEGORY CHAR(32)
);

Category is a column, which stored enum values.

For example, I have 1 millions of rows and 10 unique values of Category.

Let's populate the table with sample data:

CREATE TABLE TMP_STRINGS(
   id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
   CATEGORY CHAR(50)
);

insert into TMP_STRINGS values (1, 'category1'), (2, 'category2'), (3, 'category3'), (4, 'category4'), (5, 'category5'), (6, 'category6'), (7, 'category7'), (8, 'category8'), (9, 'category9');

insert into blog(category)
SELECT category FROM (SELECT floor(random() * 9 + 1)::int as n from generate_series(1,1000000)) AS T INNER JOIN tmp_strings ON T.n = tmp_strings.id;

This database is 42 MB:

SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_total_relation_size('"blog"'));

A row of database is 44 byte:

SELECT octet_length(t.*::text) FROM blog AS t WHERE category='category1' LIMIT 1;

Categories can be encoded with smallint, like:

category1 -- 1
category2 -- 2
category3 -- 3
category4 -- 4
category5 -- 5
category6 -- 6
category7 -- 7
category8 -- 8
category9 -- 9

Is there any way to do this automatically? I mean some option or module for String interning (String pooling).

3
  • 1
    The usual way is to store the category names in a separate table and create a foreign key to from the blog table to that table. Alternatively if the categories don't change very often, you could use an enum - but that is only an option if the categories are changed very rarely.
    – user1822
    May 26, 2018 at 16:42
  • @a_horse_with_no_name thank you for options. Also, I can store numbers and convert them to enums at program level. But I want to know, is there any string interning for postgres.
    – Max
    May 26, 2018 at 17:06
  • The "interning" is done through a second lookup table.
    – user1822
    May 26, 2018 at 17:38

1 Answer 1

3

if you want an effect like strings stored as integers use an enum type, the SQL syntax for interacting with the table will be the same, except you'll need to cast if you want to do string operations on the new column;

CREATE TYPE example_category AS ENUM (
 'category1', 'category2', 'category3', 'category4', 'category5',
 'category6', 'category7', 'category8', 'category9');

ALTER TABLE tmp_strings ALTER COLUMN category 
  TYPE example_category USING category::example_category;

I think enums use 4 bytes (possibly 5?)

1
  • An elegant technique
    – Gaius
    May 27, 2018 at 11:46

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