Store image and document files

Question

If I define a table column as BLOB type, and I want it to hold image files. Can I used it for holding multiple images/pictures? Same question is asked for the document files such as .DOC or .PDF files?
I mean something like this:
ROW ID BLOB
Row 1 Image 1
Row 2 Image 2
Row 3 Image 3
Can I put all three (images 1, 2 , and 3) into one "cell", such as:
Row 1 Image 1|Image 2|Image 3?
Similarly for the document, Can I put all three (doc 1, 2 , and 3) into one "cell", such as:
Row 1 Doc 1|Doc 2|Doc 3?
Thanks
Scott

Answer 1

scottjhn wrote:
If I define a table column as BLOB type, and I want it to hold image files. Can I used it for holding multiple images/pictures? Same question is asked for the document files such as .DOC or .PDF files?Yes, you can. But it will require you to create a "+mega datastructure+", embed the content (images, pdf, docs) into this and then saving that structure as a LOB.
For example, you can use XML, use base64 to encode the image/doc/pdf and add it into the XML structure - and repeat for each image/doc/pdf until they are all in that single XML format. XML is however not that well suited for dealing with large binary structures.
You can create your own format. You create a fixed size header structure that contains filename and size. You then write into the LOB a header+file, header+file, and so on.
Reading the LOB is relatively easy as you read a header (fixed size). This tell you how many of the following bytes are file (image/pdf/doc). Read this variable part and then read the next fixed sized header.
However... this is a lot of extra code that needs to be written. The LOB structure is a lot more complex. And you have to ask yourself how is this better in anyway to use header-and-file when you can achieve exactly the same using a table structure +(filename, lob)+.
If you want to store structured data in a database, then use the database to provide that structure for you. It is highly questionable to create your own complex data structure (only understood by your code) and then chuck that into a single database column value. This will not be robust. This cannot perform. This will never scale.
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