Thread: Large Objects

Chapter 2, Programmer's Guide says:

| In Postgres, data values are stored in tuples and individual tuples
| cannot span data pages. Since the size of a data page is 8192 bytes, the
| upper limit on the size of a data value is relatively low. To support the
| storage of larger atomic values, Postgres provides a large object
| interface.

This is relatively untrue.  We need to come up with a better reason for
why the large object interface exists, if only because the above *used* to
be true.

Any ideas?

--
Peter Eisentraut   peter_e@gmx.net   http://funkturm.homeip.net/~peter

Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> writes:
> We need to come up with a better reason for
> why the large object interface exists, if only because the above *used* to
> be true.

Other than backwards compatibility, the only usefulness of the LO
interface (IMHO) is that it provides random access to LO contents ---
ie, the ability to read or write small chunks of a large value.
TOAST can't completely replace LOs until we have a similar capability
for large toasted values.

            regards, tom lane