At 5/12/2003 08:57 PM (Monday), jbgilmartin wrote:

>It is usual to have a set of rows/objects that are created and then
>later another application acts on those objects generating variable
>length log line entries (each entry could be from 25 to 150
>characters in length) and varying between 10 and 30 lines long.
>Instead of potentially wasting 125 bytes of space for each log line
>entry if I stored each entry as a separate record in a log table
>(plus 4 bytes of space for the key field for each line), I wanted to
>use a blob field to store these.

I would consider using a VARCHAR field instead of a blob. Varchars are
variable length and compressed so you would not be incurring any extra
overhead (what you refer to as "wasted" space).

Also, consider that this database is rather small so being concerned about
800 objects of 1500 chars or so of log info each may not be worth it.