On Mon, 29 Sep 2008 22:16:12 +0200
André Warnier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> We have also looked at various data organisations over time.
> Regarding storing large objects directly in a database, the one issue
> is always that (because of the object sizes), it makes any operation
> on the rows of such a database or table very heavy. Imagine having
> to dump or reload a table that contains 500,000 "blobs" of 2-3 MB
> each. (Don't know about PostgreSQL, but many db systems require a
> dump and a reload when you change a table structure).
FYI PostgreSQL doesn't require a dump/reload when altering the table
structure.
> Oh, and I've thought of another advantage, in an Apache/web context :
> to send the content of a file to a browser, you can take advantage of
> the sendfile() call, which is very efficient. Now if your file is a
> blob in a row of a database, you have to read it yourself in memory,
> and send it, don't you ?
That is one advantage, but I'm going to take it a step further and say
by having the files outside of the database you don't even need Apache,
but should in fact use a lighter weight web server like tux, nginx, or
lighttpd for serving up static media like that.
-------------------------------------------------------
Frank Wiles, Revolution Systems, LLC.
Personal : [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wiles.org
Work : [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.revsys.com
