I just noticed that you cannot concat a fixed char column and a varchar
column in 7.1.3. Has this been fixed in 7.2?  (I can't check it here...)

test=# \d ADOXYZ
              Table "adoxyz"
 Attribute |       Type        | Modifier
-----------+-------------------+----------
 id        | integer           |
 firstname | character(24)     |
 lastname  | character varying |
 created   | date              |

test=# select firstname || lastname from ADOXYZ;
ERROR:  Unable to identify an operator '||' for types 'bpchar' and 'varchar'
        You will have to retype this query using an explicit cast


Mon, 12 Nov 2001 16:03:41 +0800
"Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au>
Problem concating bpchar and varchar in 7.1.3