[Pytables-users] Variable length string column?

[Scott M. <sco...@gm...>]

I am trying to populate an HDF5 file using PyTables with data from SQL
database.  One of the columns of this table is defined as 'VARCHAR(MAX)'.  I
would like to be able to do something like:

class NewsItems(tables.IsDescription):
    item_id = tables.Int32Col()
    isodatetime = tables.StringCol(26)
    newstext = tables.StringCol(MAX)  ** obviously won't work

In my database, the length of the strings in the varchar(max) column varries
from ~2000 to ~60000.  If I simply set the 'newstext' variable in the above
class definition to be slightly larger than the maximum length then the file
that I create is unacceptably large (over 6GB).

I am a new user to PyTables, but I have read the documentation and have not
been able to answer my own question yet.  Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

Scott