This query identifies a semantic mismatch in data type selection for columns intended to store telephone numbers. It flags columns whose identifiers imply phone number content (e.g., names containing "phone", "mobile", "telef") but are defined with non-textual data types (e.g., INTEGER, NUMERIC, BIGINT). Telephone numbers are semantically strings, as they may contain leading zeros, international prefixes (+), and formatting characters (-, (), ext.), and are not subject to arithmetic operations. Storing them as numeric types leads to data loss (truncation of leading zeros) and formatting inflexibility.
Notes
The query considers both column names in English and Estonian.
Type
Problem detection (Each row in the result could represent a flaw in the design)
Change the type of the column to VARCHAR(n) or TEXT. In the latter case add an additional constraint to the maximum value length permitted in the column.
Data Source
INFORMATION_SCHEMA only
SQL Query
SELECT table_schema, table_name, column_name, data_type, character_maximum_length
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.columns
WHERE data_type!~'(character varying|text)'
AND column_name~*'(phone|mobil|mobiil|telef|tel_nr)'
AND (table_schema, table_name) IN (SELECT table_schema, table_name
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.tables WHERE table_type='BASE TABLE') AND
table_schema NOT IN (SELECT schema_name
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.schemata
WHERE schema_name<>'public' AND
schema_owner='postgres' AND schema_name IS NOT NULL)
ORDER BY table_schema, table_name, ordinal_position;
Collections
This query belongs to the following collections:
Name
Description
Find problems about base tables
A selection of queries that return information about the data types, field sizes, default values as well as general structure of base tables. Contains all the types of queries - problem detection, software measure, and general overview
Find problems automatically
Queries, that results point to problems in the database. Each query in the collection produces an initial assessment. However, a human reviewer has the final say as to whether there is a problem or not .
Categories
This query is classified under the following categories:
Name
Description
Data types
Queries of this category provide information about the data types and their usage.
Result quality depends on names
Queries of this category use names (for instance, column names) to try to guess the meaning of a database object. Thus, the goodness of names determines the number of false positive and false negative results.