# The Surprising Impact of Medium-Size Texts on PostgreSQL Performance

DevFeed: [The Surprising Impact of Medium-Size Texts on PostgreSQL Performance](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/the-surprising-impact-of-medium-size-texts-on-postgresql-performance-33939.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://hakibenita.com/sql-medium-text-performance>)

Author: Haki Benita

Published: 2020-10-19T21:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Haki Benita](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/haki-benita.md>)

Topics: [PostgreSQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/postgresql.md>), [Database](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/database.md>)

Tags: [article](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/article.md>), [articles](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/articles.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [postgresql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgresql.md>), [sql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sql.md>)

## AI overview

This article examines how medium-size text fields can affect query performance in PostgreSQL. It introduces PostgreSQL's TOAST mechanism, which compresses or stores large field values out of line when rows exceed configured size thresholds.

## Source excerpt

Any database schema is likely to have plenty of text fields. In this article I demonstrate the surprising impact of medium-size texts on query performance.