Re: binary large object (BLOB) types

Vincent J. Buonassisi wrote: > > hi, > > i would like to know how a BLOB type field is sized in a table. does > informix have a default size, e.g., field width is initially 256 bytes > and is kept in memory? if the size of the data being stored is greater > than 256 does the data then tet stored in a file? i'm trying to figure > out how much memory a table will use if the data type of one of the > columns is BLOB. > Table information in Informix is stored on the disk. The system buffers may contain current information, however, this is a function of the engine, not the table definition. Both 'text' and 'blob' data types are stored in 1 page increments. On AIX this is 4KB. If you store 1 character, you use 1 page. If you store 4,097 characters you use 2 pages (8KB). It would be nice to set a sticky bit on a table and force it to stay in memory (BUFFERS), but that isn't really available (unless you want to issue periodic selects).