Re: Extending varlena

David Fetter wrote:
> Folks,
> 
> As the things stored in databases grow, we're going to start needing
> to think about database objects that 4 bytes of size can't describe.
> People are already storing video in lo and bytea fields.  To date, the
> sizes of media files have never trended downward.
> 

I always find these requests puzzling.  Is it really useful to store the 
data for a jpeg, video file or a 10GB tar ball in a database column? 
Does anyone actually search for byte sequences within those data streams 
(maybe if it were text)?  I would think that the metadata is what gets 
searched: title, track, name, file times, size, etc...  Database storage 
is normally pricey, stocked with 15K drives, so wasting that expensive 
storage with non-searchable binary blobs doesn't make much sense.  Why 
not offload the data to a file system with 7200 RPM SATA drives and 
store a reference to it in the db?  Keep the db more compact and simpler 
to manage.

Andrew Chernow
eSilo, LLC