We're writing a multi-language ASP web application, which stores the
translated texts in a windows resource DLL so far. Now, a client wants
different users to be able to select their preferred translation
separately, so since we're migrating to FB anyway I was thinking about
storing these translated texts in a database and pull them from there
at page generation time. This means FB would see a quite large number
of requests per page visit to this table. The table would look
something like this:

CREATE TABLE TRANSLATIONS
(
LOCALE_ID INTEGER NOT NULL,
TRANSLATION_ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
TRANSLATION_TEXT VARCHAR(1024) NOT NULL,

PRIMARY KEY (LOCALE_ID, TRANSLATION_ID),
);

My questions:

* Is this a reasonable use for FB? Are other people doing things like
this?

* Are there specific tunings I could do to make this as fast as
possible (separate database? read-only database? FB server
settings?)

* Are there distinct speed advantages of using BLOBs vs VARCHARs? I've
read http://www.volny.cz/iprenosil/interbase/ip_ib_strings.htm but
reading "Do you want to minimize conversation between client and
server ?" and "Do you want good performance ?" I could see how
either of them could apply.

Thanks,
Emile