[keycloak-user] User attribute value length in SQL database

[Tair Sabirgaliev]

Hi,

When configuring Keycloak to use Active Directory we found that some  
attributes could not fit into user_attributes.value column in Postgresql.  
The problematic values are Cyrillic text. As I suspect, they are encoded  
using ASCII charset, thus get longer and don’t fit into default 255 length.  
Workaround was to change the column data type:

alter table user_attribute alter COLUMN value type text;  

Is this the right thing to do considering database evolutions when  
migrating from version to version? Can this workaround be incorporated  
into Keycloak codebase? At least for Postgresql it is considered safe  
performance-wise, references here:  

1. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4848964/postgresql-difference-between-text-and-varchar-character-varying
2. http://www.depesz.com/2010/03/02/charx-vs-varcharx-vs-varchar-vs-text/  

Thank you!
--  
Tair Sabirgaliev  
Bee Software, LLP