Message-ID: <001f01be4de6$b7757e60$8d0835d1@bconnected.net>
Reply-To: "Gregory W Burnham" <gburnham@sfu.ca>
From: "Gregory W Burnham" <gburnham@sfu.ca>
To: "Thomas G. Lockhart" <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>
Cc: <pgsql-interfaces@postgreSQL.org>
Subject: Re: [INTERFACES] Large objects, why not use the filesystem?
Date: Mon, 1 Feb 1999 05:28:12 -0800
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----- Original Message ----- 
From: Thomas G. Lockhart <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>
To: Gregory W Burnham <gburnham@sfu.ca>
Cc: <pgsql-interfaces@postgreSQL.org>
Sent: Monday, February 01, 1999 5:26 AM
Subject: Re: [INTERFACES] Large objects, why not use the filesystem?


>> Ok, I've seen all the xinv* files, I understand that.  But what
>> if the benefit of using large objects over files?  If there isn't
>> superior performance then why do it?
>
>To provide a consistant access interface in a client-server environment.
>Managing one interface is usually easier than managing several (e.g.
>postgres, html, ftp, ...) to support a single app. 

Right, but I'm storing html and gif in my blobs and just
writing them out to stdout.  Why shouldn't I just store
the file names and put the files right on the server?

>I would expect the performance of LOs to be somewhat worse than direct
>file system access to the same data, for a variety of reasons. But for
>many applications that performance difference is not a critical issue.

To quote a friend of mine, "Efficiency is an issue only when 
inefficiency is a problem."  But still, you want to be as
efficient as possible, right?  In retrospec, it would have
been more efficient to store all four digits of the year, right?

Gregory W Burnham
Software Engineer
Excite Labs
Faculty Of Education
Simon Fraser University
Vancouver, BC, V5A 1S6
604 291 3615 (ph)
604 291 5679 (fx)