Re: Is there any reason why databases cannot have a binary formatted datatype?

Andrew Maclean wrote:
> Is there some underlying physical reason why postgresql and other
> databases cannot handle binary data without going through all this
> silly escape stuff which must have a massive impact on performance. Or
> is it just because databases originally were built to handle just test
> data?

What John said, but just a small note. The text representation of the
various datatypes are fairly static. The binary representations can
change - even between two databases with the same version number
(floating-point vs big-int timestamps). For a meaningless (to the db)
"blob" type that doesn't matter, but you will need to be aware of the
issues and have appropriate tests in place for your application.

-- 
  Richard Huxton
  Archonet Ltd