On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 10:08:48AM -0700, Jonathan Bartlett wrote:
> BLOBs are PostgreSQL wierdness from before PostgreSQL had TOAST (which
> removed the 8kb row limit). See
Actually, blobs were invented by the guys at Interbase many years ago.
There's a nice history on them on the ibphoenix site:
http://www.ibphoenix.com/a4355.htm
The whole TOAST concept uses a very similar mechanism (using a pointer
to an object that's somewhere else), but for toastable fields the
handling is transparent to the user. That is, the user just gets or
sets the field in the same way he would with any standard datatype.
With blobs, you had to use special syntax.
That's what I know, at least. I'm sure somebody will correct me if
there's anything wrong.
--
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>)
"Pensar que el espectro que vemos es ilusorio no lo despoja de espanto,
sólo le suma el nuevo terror de la locura" (Perelandra, CSLewis)
