Re: Regarding bytea column in Posgresql

John,

Please find my response inline.

Thanks..

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org [mailto:pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of John R Pierce
Sent: Friday, April 10, 2015 12:57 AM
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Regarding bytea column in Posgresql

On 4/9/2015 4:10 AM, Bill Moran wrote:
>> 1. Is 'bytea' column intended for storing text data?
> No, it's intended for storing binary data.
>
>> >2. Typically a chat can have text data with several special characters (which can be represented in multi bytes), how these characters can be stored in a bytea column and retrieved back properly?
> bytea won't help you here. You'll have to manage the special
> characters entirely in your code. bytea gives you back the exact same
> types you put in, with no changes or interpretation.
>
> A better choice would be to use a text field with a proper text
> encoding (such as utf-8).

one possible rationale for using BYTEA is that the data could be in various encodings, which the application wishes to preserve, and keeps
track of somewhere else (perhaps in a field within the XML?).
PostgreSQL text types would insist that all text be stored in the same encoding, and anything in a different encoding would have to be
converted to the database encoding. Me, I'd be inclined to convert
everything to UTF8 and store it as such, and convert it back to the user's encoding on display, but the feasibility of this really depends on the use cases.

--
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

--> I confirmed with the developers who had originally developed this product and as per them, the xml is in UTF-8 encoding. So, ideally it would have been better to have a text or XML column type.

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