You could use a binary PList or some other form of structured data - the BPList blob could then contain, ints, floats, strings byte arrays or even embedded binary plists. As it is a structured format then to an extent it is self documenting (in terms of the stored data types) Paul www.sandersonforensics.com skype: r3scue193 twitter: @sandersonforens Tel +44 (0)1326 572786 http://sandersonforensics.com/forum/content.php?195-SQLite-Forensic-Toolkit -Forensic Toolkit for SQLite email from a work address for a fully functional demo licence
On 17 April 2016 at 16:27, William Drago <Bill at williamjdrago.com> wrote: > On 4/17/2016 9:45 AM, Simon Slavin wrote: >> >> On 17 Apr 2016, at 1:02pm, William Drago <wdrago at verizon.net> wrote: >> >>> I am forced to consider this approach because my function will be >>> receiving blobs but will have no idea what those blobs are. >> >> Why do you care ? A BLOB is a BLOB. It doesn't matter whether it's an >> integer, a string, a car, a peace treaty or the smell of newly cut grass. >> You store it when told to and retrieve it when told to. > > > My job is to find all the blob columns and unblob them into arrays of > whatever type they originally were before they were blob'd. > >>> if this "feature" is not clearly documented someone in the future will >>> have a very hard time figuring out why the blobs don't make sense. >> >> BLOBs don't make sense. They're opaque. You are not meant to understand >> anything about what's in a BLOB. That's for the layer of your software >> which packs the information into a blob or unpacks the blob back into >> information. > > > Understood. I'm writing the code that does the packing and unpacking. The > users are designing their own databases. When they store for example, an > array of 16 bit integers, or an array of 64 bit floats, I want to give them > the same thing back when they query the database not just an array of bytes > that they have to decode themselves. > > Since I have control over how the blobs are generated, I can easily add a > type identifier to each blob so that I know how to unblob it. > > -Bill > _______________________________________________ > sqlite-users mailing list > sqlite-users at mailinglists.sqlite.org > http://mailinglists.sqlite.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users
