Re: store pdf files

On Tuesday 09 December 2008 18:57:15 Frank Bax wrote:
> ivan marchesini wrote:
> > Hi to all...
> > I need to create a db that contain link to some pdf files..
> > At the moment these are simple links (to the files that are stored into
> > the file system) storing paths into a column of a dbf table...
> >
> > I need to manage this data considering that the db I'm going to create
> > will be moved in some months to another server...
> > so I think that the link to the files positions into the file system
> > isn't a valid solution...
> >
> > can you suggest me a better way to manage this pdf data??
> > Each pdf is quite small (<100k)
> >
> > should I use BLOB?
>
>
> Leave the files on filesystem and code the highest level directory into
> a function.

Absolutely not. You'll loose transactional safety the DB provides. That reason alone is good enough to justify storing the files in a BLOB (BYTEA in PG).

The length(BYTEA)-function in PG can be used to retrieve its length. It is IMMUTABLE and "constant time", which means you can apply a functional-index on it. That way you don't need to store the size of the file in a separate column.

--
Andreas Joseph Krogh <andreak(at)officenet(dot)no>
Senior Software Developer / CEO
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