This concept of using complex types in tables actually does have one legitimate use. When used with casts and functions, you could use it as a "poor-man's datatype" development method.
Here is a hypothetical example. Imagine for a moment that there was no CIDR datatype. I could create a datatype as a set of ints and then create casting functions which I could use for display of the data. This would be similar to C except that it could be done by people like myself whose C coding skills are not up to the level where I or anyone else would want them in the database backend ;-) Best Wishes, Chris Travers ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/docs/faqs/FAQ.html