Re: > 16TB worth of data question - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Doug McNaught
Subject Re: > 16TB worth of data question
Date
Msg-id m365p71xn3.fsf@varsoon.wireboard.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to > 16TB worth of data question  (Jeremiah Jahn <jeremiah@cs.earlham.edu>)
List pgsql-general
Paul Ramsey <pramsey@refractions.net> writes:

> Heck, is the Pg BLOB interface anything more than a cute hook into
> filesystem storage?

Yes; it's organized as a table and storage-managed the same way as
other tables.

> I've often wondered what the point of BLOBs is,
> beyond providing a single API to all the data (maybe that *is* the
> point).

That, plus when you back up the database you're backing up everything
you need, plus it's harder for the database and the 'filesystem' to
get out of sync (you can use triggers etc to make sure, and easily run
queries to make sure you don't have any dangling references).

> Is there a performance advantage?

Slight disadvantage, I should think (unless the individual-file
approach stupidly puts them all in one directory, which can be very
slow on some system).

-Doug

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