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Peter Farmer wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I need some guiudance on what is the best way to deal with a std sympa 
> database
> field that is too small for my usage patterns ?
>
> I am using the subscriber topics feature heavily and for some particular 
> lists,
> a subscriber may need to be registered for many or all of the 250+ 
> (predefined)
> topics . The topics_subscriber field in the subscriber table is too small to
> cope with this much text  (only 200 chars whereas I _may_ need up to 3000
> chars). I can change the database structure - say by converting to
> topics_subscriber to a TEXT field and this works ok ( other than needing to
> modify the wwsympa interface to present user records in a way that copes with
> the much larger potential field size). I also need to turn off (via
> update_db_field_types) the automatic database structure update that sympa does
> on restarts - it detects the changes made to the default structure and 
> rebuilds
> the db. 
>
> Is this the correct/best way to deal with this issue ?. 
Yes

> Is there anything else
> I need to do to preserve my changes ?. 
No

> Should/Can I alter what sympa considers
> the 'correct' database structure so it doesnt trigger database structure
> changes at restart without having to turn off automatic database structure
> updates altogether ( with update_db_field_types)
Yes that's the best way to deal with. We didn't imagine some could 
define  250+ topics ! I don't known if it is a reasonable use of topics 
and if we enlarge this database field.

Serge Aumont