--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "innoy1k" <duncan.chen@t...>
wrote:

> Hi Adam,
>
> Thank you for your reply.
>
> Just one more question, what do you think about my Option 2)? Because
> we can not see a BLOB field without a tool to retrive it first, then
> open the mail in outlook.
>

Hello Duncan,

Option 2 would certainly work in theory. It has advantages such as
being kind on resources, and being easy to manipulate and maintain.

The disadvantages are obviously that all bets are off if someone does
something like moves the msg stores to another folder. Backing up the
database will not be sufficient, the msg files would also need to be
backed up.

I don't believe there is a single right way to do it, there are pros
and cons to each. For example, how long will it take to do the normal
email-y things, such as searching, ordering by sender, retrieving a
list of subject lines and alike.

My personal angle would be to store the msg file (compressed) inside a
BLOB, and store the data that you would like to reference often
(sender / date / subject / etc) inside normal fields (possibly
indexed). Although it is duplicating some information, it should pay
off in the long run because simple things like retrieving the subject
lines from all messages (a very common thing) would be lightning fast.

Adam