Long strings in MySQL database

[mrickert]

I need to store many long text strings to a MySQL database. I have very little experience with them (I've only used them for authentication). Is there a maximum number of characters (or bytes) that a database can store in one field? Some of the strings could be over 5000 characters, with over a hundred of them at any given time. Maybe there's a better way to do this? I really can't split them up very easily, I guess if I had to I could but that just allows more room for errors. Anybody have any suggestions?

Matt

[ShrineDesigns]

depends on the column type you use, see: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/st...-overview.html for further info

[element]

Yeah, a longblob or longtext will do just fine...you could probably use something even smaller, 5000 bytes is like 4.8KB's...not even close to the limit of 4GB's.

If you need to store anything larger then 4GB's, I wouldn't store it directly in MySQL as you may have problems with data that large...just link to a file located on the server. You may also want to look into data compression if its just plain text and that large...binary compression on text files is extremely good.

It'll be hard for most computers to open up 4GB text files though...