Re: bytea or large object

On Thu, Apr 04, 2002 at 11:40:51AM +0200, Frank Joerdens wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 03, 2002 at 04:47:29PM +0200, Jean-Christophe FABRE wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I would like to store .pdf files in a database, which is accessed through a
> > PHP interface.
> > which is the best way to store binary data?
> > - bytea? (with the tricky handling of escape chars)
> > - large objects?
>
> I asked the same question a week ago on pgsql-general. Here's my 2
> cents: The Postgres large object interface is older and therefore more
> tried and tested. It used to have a reputation for slowness, but the
> code was overhauled in 7.1 to address this issue. The LO interface is a
> little convoluted and takes some getting used to, but works well. For
> Bytea you can use "normal" SQL syntax. Escaping the data is not
> really difficult.

I forgot: A distinct advantage of bytea over large objects is that you
can still use pg_dumpall to back up your entire server in a single step.
It doesn't work with large objects because pg_dumpall can't create
binary output in an e.g. tar file. This means that if you use large
objects, you have to back up your databases one by one, using a binary
output format with pg_dump.

Regards, Frank