lshift/diffa — Issue #39: Column lengths too long for MySQL
Author: anthonyls
Created: 2012-02-20 15:43:13+00:00
State: open

In order to address a limitation in MySQL, the lengths of some varchar columns must be reduced. For consistency and better communication of intention of column content, a review of all columns was conducted, the result of which will be this patch.
General principles
* no check constraints (allows greater flexibility of schema change at the cost of less meaning in constraints)
* short columns are set 20 characters
* id/key/name type columns with reasonably short but usually user-definable content: 50 characters
* other columns with content potentially generated by external systems, but not known to need great length: 255 characters
* columns with specific need for greater length: 1024 characters (e.g. URLs, email addresses)