[ZODB-Dev] Relstorage Blob support and Oracle

[Martijn Pieters]

Hi,

We've looked over the RelsStorage ZODB Blob storage implementation and
came to the conclusion that the current use of blob chunks is
unnecessary in Oracle when using the cx_Oracle database connector. Not
splitting ZODB Blobs into chunks may have performance benefits on the
Oracle side (especially on 11g) as Oracle can then use read-ahead more
efficiently for the larger BLOBs while streaming these back to the
client.

I'll be refactoring the blob support currently found in RelStorage
1.5b2 to just store one blob in one row, using the cx_Oracle
LOB.read() and .write() methods, which let you read and write to blobs
in chunks to avoid memory overload, and I'll reuse the blob chunk size
to determine how much we read / write per iteration.

I am currently leaning towards dropping the chunk column in the Oracle
schema altogether; it certainly won't hold any other value than
integer "0" after my refactor. Any reason to keep it, other than that
others whom already are using 1.5b2 on an Oracle database will now
have to drop that column again (or set it to a default value of "0" on
insert)? Should the code support reading blob chunks still?

-- 
Martijn Pieters