Message-ID: <41FEFCAA.5070603@illusions.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 20:51:06 -0700
From: Dennis Sacks <dennis@illusions.com>
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To: Sam Adams <samadams@myfastmail.com>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: BLOBs vs BYTEA
References: <1107224790.13576.214020918@webmail.messagingengine.com>
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Sam Adams wrote:

>Anyway, I was wondering which would be a better way to store a large
>amount of files each a few megabytes in size. There could be hundreds of
>thousands of files altogether. If stored as BYTEAs this would put them
>all in a single table. Would this effect performance considerablely? I
>assume if there were thousands then it would. But if the data is stored
>as BLOBs then aren't they store inside the database just in another
>table? Wouldn't this also be undesirable. Would it be better to store
>them normally on the file system and just provide the path and file name
>in the database. Obviously this wont provide any security or backup but
>would it make sense to do it this way with such a large amount of data?
>  
>
This is one of those age old debates. I've done both, and I'll tell you 
that in my experience it is less of a headache to store the files in the 
filesystem (which is what filesystems are designed for) and store the 
metadata in the database.

Dennis Sacks
dennis@illusions.com