Hi everyone, I’m adding a new text field to a dataset. Since this field allows free-form text, the number of characters can vary significantly — from a single word to a longer paragraph. In my tests, I noticed that even when the text was longer, only part of it was displayed on the screen. Is this behavior purely visual, or is the system actually saving only a limited number of characters? I’d like to confirm whether GoodData has any limitation on the maximum number of characters allowed for this type of field.

Hi Adriane, There is a 255 characters limit within the UI which is a hard limit and you cannot really go beyond it. Please see the related documentation: https://help.gooddata.com/doc/growth/en/data-integration/data-modeling-in-gooddata/data-modeling-and-maql/change-the-length-of-attribute-labels As it is stated in the doc, you can however export the data (which we consider as valid workaround) from GoodData and it should cover the whole length of the attribute element. You just need to make sure that this data came from your database where it was stored same or higher above Varchar(255) datatype (and also make sure that in LDM it's set above TEXT(255). So to answer your question - yes, the data can be loaded in GoodData but frontend display size is limited. Our platform limits https://support.gooddata.com/hc/en-us/articles/4407896389139-Platform-Limits#anchor_6

Thanks for the heads-up! However, the Text (255) option doesn’t appear for me in the LDM. Do I need to do anything specific to make this option available?

You need to go into EDIT mode of your LDM and type it manually for the Text field.

Could the field size (for example, Text(128), Text(255), or Text(1000)) impact the data loading performance in GoodData? In other words, does increasing the text field length have any effect on the time it takes to load data into the platform?

I would say that

Text(128)

vs

Text(255)

is basically irrelevant for performance — the difference is too small to have any measurable impact during data loading. Even

Text(1000)

or higher usually has only a slight effect, and that’s typically noticeable only when working with very large datasets. What matters far more for performance are factors like the number of rows being loaded, the actual size of the text stored (not just the defined limit), and the overall volume of data being processed.

Thanks a lot for all the info and quick replies!