The PostgreSQL Dialect sets, by default, a 255 character limit on the 'varchar' type. In the wonderful world of Postgres, however, a varchar without a length specification can be arbitrarily large (up to the limits of the data type, which is about 1GB).

(http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.0/inte ... acter.html)

Given that I consider this a feature, not a bug, is there a way to unset this default? (e.g. 'CREATE TABLE T1 (TID int, TVALUE varchar);' instead of 'CREATE TABLE T1 (TID int, TVALUE varchar(255));') While I can explicitly set this to a large value, it would be far simpler for the Hibernate PostgreSQL dialect to assume the developer who is using this database understands, accepts, and expects this particularly powerful PostgreSQL extension.

Thanks in advance,

Foo

Use your own Dialect. Extend PostgreSQL dialect and call method
registerColumnType( Types.VARCHAR, "varchar(8000)" );
in the constructor.
This will generate varchar(8000) for all column (even if you set lengts manually).

Or override method public Dialect#getTypeName(int code, int length, int precision, int scale) throws HibernateException {
if (Types.VARCHAR == code) {
}
}

I've accidentally sent not finished message.
Or override method public
Dialect#getTypeName(int code, int length, int precision, int scale) throws HibernateException {
// return varchar(8000) for columns with default names
if (Types.VARCHAR /*==12*/ == code && length == org.hibernate.mapping.Column.DEFAULT_LENGTH /*==255*/) {
return "varchar(8000)";
}
return super.getTypeName(code, length, precision, scale);
}