Message-Id: <4.1.19990131151130.00a91180@firebat.wolfepub.com>
Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 15:26:15 -0500
To: pgsql-interfaces@postgreSQL.org
From: Matthew Hagerty <matthew@wolfepub.com>
Subject: Large objects, why not use the filesystem?
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

Greetings,

I always see posts of people trying to get their large binary and text
objects into and out of the database somehow.  I was wondering if there is
some reason why just storing a filename in the table would be a bad thing?
This way you can let the file system worry about storing the data (since
that is what the file system is good at.)  I understand that you probably
could not access the data via ODBC, but if you are writing your frontend in
C or Perl, etc. then you would simply use the filename stored in the table
to access the data.

Comments?

Also, could someone explain varchar?  I have never found a *really* clear
explanation and I'm not sure I fully understand its potential, use, and/or
shortcomings.

Thank you,
Matthew Hagerty