[Asterisk-Users] Asterisk & MySQL Blobs

[Colin Anderson]

>Has anyone had production experience using * w/ MySQL Blobs to store sound
files?  The >application I am working on requires all user data resides in a
database.   I am currently >reading/writing the files to disk via a phpagi
scripts but I would love to read the blob into a> variable in the dial plan,
etc.  It seems like a waste of resources to write and delete the file.   

Too bad your requirement is to have everything in the DB, 'cause you will be
asking for trouble in the long run. BLOBs are probably the fastest way to
kill your DB once you scale. I did an experiment a few years ago to stream
faxes as BLOB's into a SQL server and performance beyond a few thousand
records was to put it mildly crap. 

IMO, use filesystem for files. Use DB for DB. Put a pointer in a field to
the file. Your DB will love you for it. 

WinFS is the Microsoft solution to this problem (assuming it ever ships and
gets backported), but I think the Linux guys are doing something like it
with Reiser4, there's a plug in for this??