Storing messages as BLOB (Binary Large Object) or ordinary text?

Question

What is the best way to store messaging texts in large/big web sites: BLOB or ordinary text in table or something else? Database: MySQL.

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 04 '21 at 07:51

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There are a lot of questions you need to ask yourself when making that decision. There's a very detailed article, To BLOB or not to BLOB, that is the question: Whether to store string in BLOB, or CHAR, or VARCHAR? (archived), that talks about some of the things to consider.

edited Jun 04 '21 at 07:51

drac_o

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answered Feb 05 '10 at 15:47

Ashish Agarwal

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You really should not rip-off an entire article and post the text here. It would be pretty poor form even if you had have included an attribution, which you did not. Original here: http://www.volny.cz/iprenosil/interbase/ip_ib_strings.htm – APC Feb 07 '10 at 16:41
I agree with @APC. A summary would be fine with the link, but don't just copy an entire article without giving proper attribution. – Bill the Lizard Feb 07 '10 at 17:25
Thnax Bill for suggestion,will do the same form time ownwards – Ashish Agarwal Feb 07 '10 at 19:18
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Hmm seems the link is gone, if you only would have copied the text, we could still read it :-) – Jettro Coenradie Jun 08 '19 at 13:24

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 05 '10 at 15:15

If by "messages" you mean something like SMS or IRC, stuff with a defined limit then I think VARCHAR is the most appropriate. If your messages can really be any size then TEXT would be better.

But I wouldn't have thought BLOB was suitable for anything except perhaps attachments (assuming your system has them). BLOBs are meant for binary files (e.g. images, Word documents) not pure text.

Storing messages as BLOB (Binary Large Object) or ordinary text?

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