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From: aoki@postgres.Berkeley.EDU (Paul M. Aoki)
To: apc@inel.gov (Christine Cullen)
Cc: postgres@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
Subject: Re: ASCII file storage in Postgres 
Reply-To: aoki@postgres.Berkeley.EDU (Paul M. Aoki)
In-reply-to: Your message of Tue, 22 Mar 94 08:26:23 MST 
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Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 16:39:58 -0800
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Resent-Date: Wed, 23 Mar 94 16:40:19 -0800
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apc@inel.gov (Christine Cullen) writes:
> I am a brand new user of Postgres.  I realize that this question
> may be ridiculous, but I need help desperately.  
> We are interested in using Postgres to store and query large 
> scientific data ascii files.

there's no inherent reason why you can't -- postgres supports
typed (as opposed to BLOB) large objects.  it's not clear what
you're trying to do in terms of "query", though.  for example,
it's not clear whether it might not be better to store the
actual data in tables rather than what amount to flat files in
BLOBs.  at this point, we're falling into the realm of database 
design consulting.

general advice:
if you have a production (as opposed to prototype) application
i would recommend buying supported software.  it will have bugs,
too, but (one would hope) not as many and there's someone you 
can call and yell at.
--
  Paul M. Aoki  |  CS Div., Dept. of EECS, UCB  |  aoki@postgres.Berkeley.EDU
                |  Berkeley, CA 94720           |  ...!uunet!ucbvax!aoki