title: SQL: Is there a way to get the average number of characters for a field?
body: <p>Is there a simple sql query that can help me to determine the average number of characters that a (text) database field has?</p>
  
  <p>For instance my field is called "message".  Ideally I would love to do something like this...</p>
  
  <pre><code>select average(characterlength(message)) from mydatabasetable
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>is this even possible through sql?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks!</p>