On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 05:06:36PM -0600, Eric McKeeth wrote: > On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 2:20 PM, Emi Lu <em...@encs.concordia.ca> wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > To save pdf files into postgresql8.3, what is the best column type? > > > > bytea, blob, etc? > > > > Thank you, > > Emi > > > > Everyone else has pointed out reasons for not doing this, and I agree with > them that in the large majority of cases just storing a reference to a file > stored outside the database is preferable. However, to answer the question > you asked, my rule of thumb is that if you need to store binary data in the > database is to use a bytea column, unless you need the random access > capabilities that the large object interface provides. A bytea column is > typically easier to use, and has proper transactional behavior, enforcement > of referential integrity, etc. >
I'm with Eric on this one: for smaller use cases, the convenience of bytea in the db is nice. As to random access, I wrote a client-side wrapper for our middleware that implements a file iterator interface for python on top of substr(bytea,position,blocksize). I was sort of surprised at how well it performed. We're using it in production right now. I actually store files in a leaf table w/ and id and hash, with filenames in a separate linking table, so I'm even getting data deduplication (all the rage in biz these days) for free. Ross -- Ross Reedstrom, Ph.D. reeds...@rice.edu Systems Engineer & Admin, Research Scientist phone: 713-348-6166 Connexions http://cnx.org fax: 713-348-3665 Rice University MS-375, Houston, TX 77005 GPG Key fingerprint = F023 82C8 9B0E 2CC6 0D8E F888 D3AE 810E 88F0 BEDE -- Sent via pgsql-sql mailing list (pgsql-sql@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-sql
