Re: Storing blobs in PG DB

On 4/5/07, Listmail <lists(at)peufeu(dot)com> wrote:
>
> > My personal view is that in general, binary files have no place in
> > databases. Filesystems are for files, databases are for data. My design
> > choice is to store the files in a fileystem and use the database to hold
> > metadata as well as a pointer to the file.
> >
> > If you *must* put files into the database, then you can do so, and PG
> > will handle that many files of those sizes with ease. For all intents
> > and purposes, PG can store an unlimited number of files. You're far more
> > likely to run into walls in the form of limitations in your disk I/O
> > system then limitations in what PG will handle.
>
> And you can't backup with rsync...

no, but you can do incrementals with PITR, which is just as good (if
not better) than rsync because you are backing up your database
'indexer' and binaries in one swoop...so the backup argument doesn't
fly, imo.

imo, sql is a richer language for storing and extracting any type of
data, binaries included, than hierarchal filesystem style
organization. I think most reasons why not to store binaries in the
database boil down to performance.

merlin