Re: [INTERFACES] Large objects, why not use the filesystem?

On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, Matthew Hagerty wrote:

> Greetings,
>
> I always see posts of people trying to get their large binary and text
> objects into and out of the database somehow. I was wondering if there is
> some reason why just storing a filename in the table would be a bad thing?
> This way you can let the file system worry about storing the data (since
> that is what the file system is good at.) I understand that you probably
> could not access the data via ODBC, but if you are writing your frontend in
> C or Perl, etc. then you would simply use the filename stored in the table
> to access the data.
>
> Comments?

It depends on you application. I noticed in another post that you are
using it for .cgi. In that case you could store the filename into the
database, then access it directly. I've used this method on a couple of
occasions in the past.

However, this doesn't work if you have, say a server in a different
continent to the user. Then you could have a URL stored in the database,
and use another protocol to serve the objects. This however, leads to the
problem of having to keep an httpd server running, and also - depending on
the application, could have security implications. Having a separate
protocol to serve the large objects may not be viable if you want to
limit access to them.

Storing them in the database has it's benefits. You are certain that the
objects are going to a client that's actually connected to the database.
Also, Corba objects may depend on using Large Objects for storing data too
large to fit in normal tables.

Peter

--
Peter T Mount peter(at)retep(dot)org(dot)uk
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