Re: bytea and text

On Sunday 29 November 2009 17:50:10 Didier Gasser-Morlay wrote:
> I hope you won't mind if I had my 2 cents to this conversation; aside from
> the actual format, this question comes up with regularity on various
> database lists.
>
> I have never understood the need for storing images inside a database (and
> to some extend blob data) because:
>   - being a blog you do not query it just store and retrieve, you rarely
> update, so the need for a fancy SQL and DB engine is somewhat limited;
>
>   - storing images is heavy, makes the database grow, thus makes
> backup/restore that bit more painful and possibly that bit less stable. ..
>
> For years I designed system for picture libraries where numbers like 10s of
> thousands to millions of images are common place, we would never have
> contemplated to store images on anything more complex than a file system.
> using the database to store a URL to that resource.
>
> Hope this helps
>
> Didier
>
this is **mission critical** for me (alone perhaps) as the images (usually
very small  (eg many could be 15K for a small photo, 3k - 16K for a small
diagram of a body part) are part of some medical record software I'm writing
for myself, and sit in the progress notes when displayed.  Just alteration of
a line drawn on a body part for an injured patient could end you up in court
or de-registered.

Medico-legal issues abound.

Yes, one can easily backup files in a directory, but my current feeling is its
easier to do an entire DB dump - could be wrong, stand to be corrected.

Regards

Richard