> I am sorry to bump this, but has anyone else got experience of using
> blobs on Linux?

Yes, of course, but I never felt the need to time the operations, we
are using a udf ... to load documents into the database.

I will try to find the time to check this with some big mp3's.

Frank, many thanks for your response, example UDF and testing. I will certainly try to implement the UDF later today.

Yesterday I tried the same IBPP code on Windows 8 and it is much faster for files ~10Mb in size, but I also tested 500Mb video and performance was similar to Linux at that size. As well as my IBPP code, I also tested FlameRobin, Database Workbench and FSQL on Windows all with broadly similar results.

Unfortunately apart from FlameRobin I couldn't find any simple way to load a blob on Linux, so your UDF will be a good comparison for me to make.

I found this interesting blog but unfortunately the code linked to is no longer available.

http://codicesoftware.blogspot.com/2008/09/firebird-is-faster-than-filesystem-for.html

Thanks again....Mike