Storing Large Objects

Hi All......

I'm writing a php web application which sells mp3 music for production
use (a rather limited audience, as opposed to a general mp3 download
site).

Since I've heard large objects were a bother I've written it so the mp3s
were in files with long obfuscated filenames and have put them in a
directory hidden behind basic authentication, planning a php front end to
the basic authentication and storing the file urls in the database.  Now
I'm considering shortlived symbolic filenames to further make it difficult
to rip off the mp3 files by other users with valid log in credentials that
can get past the basic authentication.

Basically it's turning into one big unwieldy kluge.

I'm reading about large object php functions and am considering storing
the mp3s themselves as large objects in postgreSQL, rather than just the
filenames, and it's starting to look better and better!  It would be very
easy to make it so that only the valid user could pull the mp3 large
object out of postgreSQL.

Is storing large objects as easy as the php functions make it look?  What
about the pg_dump difficulties with large objects?

I'm using Debian Stable which has postgreSQL 7.2.1 and PHP 4.1.2 which so
far has been working fine with my small text databases, but I suspect if I
want to consider large objects I should really upgrade, eh?

TIA....

brew

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