[TYPO3-dev] Question about rev. 2186: TINYTEXT columns to VARCHAR(255)

[Mathias Behrle]

* R. van Twisk am Tue, 27 Mar 2007 11:35:54 -0500:

> Use TEXT unless you want to setup a constracint on the text size you 
> want to storage. But since the TCA will setup that constraint for you. I would suggest 
> using TEXT.

That is basically exactly what I thought. 

> I believe 'we' had problems with oracle. Oracle uses NULL as a empty 
> TEXT string (which is
> different from heaving a TEXT string of 0 bytes, just to clarify).
> But from PHP I don't think it's a big problem. NULL will be converted to 
> a empty string whenever needed,
> this is just a wild guess....

AFAIS the problem was/is to compare NULL values, which gives undefined
results. But I don't know, if this at least DBMS related issue is also
relevant in PHP.

>> I suggest you change all '' to NULL.
>>   
> This 'might' lead to problems... But I am not sure how TCA will behave.
> a default '' NOT NULL follows a bit more what mysql does I think.

So generally speaking it should be a suitable setup to have all text
columns
TEXT default '' NOT NULL
(at least for postgres).
Wouldn't this be worth to be generally implemented by DBAL?

Thanks a lot for your feedback!

Mathias