irstv/orbisgis — pull request #95 by gourlaysama (2012-08-14 07:51:23+00:00)
Title: String-related optimizations

This implements some long-waiting optimizations for storing text values in Gdms.

The reasons and details are here: [stringimprovements.pdf](http://gourlay.eu/~gourlaysama/files/stringimprovements.pdf)

A more pragmatic note:
* this does not break public API (it only adds a bit to it)
* this does not change the way text is stored on disk, so no incompatibilities there
* this DOES change some performance assumptions people had on using `value.getAsString()`
* this improves performance of most String-related SQL functions
* this severely reduces memory usage during edition and most SQL joins (more to come on this last one)