Mike Matrigali wrote:
Suresh Thalamati wrote:
Mike Matrigali wrote:
Suresh Thalamati wrote:
Daniel John Debrunner wrote:
Suresh Thalamati wrote:
BLOB:
....
1) Allow import/export of blob data only when they it is stored
in an external file.
2) Write the blob data to the export file along with other data
types during export, assuming the blob data does not contain any
delimiters and throw an error if on import if it finds delimiters
inside the data, by interpreting it using the same code-set as the
other character data.
I say option 1) and I assume it's for all binary data, not just
BLOB, e.g. VARCHAR FOR BIT DATA etc. Seems like with binary data
the chance of having a problematic character in the text file is
close to 100%.
Dan.
Thanks for reading the proposal, Dan. I agree with you , chance of
finding delimiter character inside a binary data is very high. I
will go with the option 1. Your assumption is correct , it applies
to all the binary data.
I also agree, it seems like a reasonable first step to default binary
export/import to external files.
I am probably missing something here though. I thought for char data
there is an algorithm that handles delimiter data within it. Why does
that not work for binary data also? Is it a codeset issue?
Yes. For character data, double delimiters are used if there are
delimiter characters inside the data. i.e say if a column contains
'he said "derby is solid database" ' , then it is written to the
export file as "he said ""derby is a solid database "" " . So on
export of the data, data is modified before writing to the file.
It may be possible to do the same thing by interpreting the binary
data in specified code-set and add an extra delimiter for every
delimiter found on export and do the reverse on import. But unlike
the character data , if the binary data is changed and if user import
it to some other application, the data may mean/look completely
different if the added extra delimiter characters are not removed.
Again I think the separate file/no delimiter solution is a good first
approach, I just wanted to understand the issue. As you point out there
are multiple usage scenario's here:
1) someone has a derby db and wants to export for use into another derby
db.
2) someone has a derby db and wants to export for use in another
application.
3) someone has some data from another app and wants to import into derby.
I think the separate file solution works for #1. I don't know how well
it works for option #2 and #3. But at least for #2 it results in the
raw data without need to process it.
Hi Mike ,
After thinking bit more about the cases you mentioned, better solution
might be to do write the binary data in HEX format when exporting the
data to only one file, instead of modifying the binary data with
double delimiters. This way main export file will be text file
as it is now.
Only restriction with this approach is users can not use the hex
number (A-F , a-f, 0-9) as the delimiter; I think this restriction is
reasonable one.
If users required raw format , they can export binary data types to a
separate file using the new procedures.
Thanks
-suresh
