BLOB Full Form

What Is The Full Form Of BLOB?

The full form of BLOB is Binary Large Object.

BLOB is basically a collection/ chunk of binary data stored in the form of a single entity in a DB (database) system. BLOBs primarily hold images, videos, sound, and other multimedia objects. But they are also sometimes used to store binary executable code. Not all Database Management Systems (DBMS) support BLOB. They can feasibly exist at runtime in the form of program variables in some languages or as persistent values inside some DB (databases).

Some clouds serve as BLOB storage. And they support the storage of unstructured data in a large amount- like text or binary data, for ex- Azure Blob Storage.

History of BLOB

• Jim Starkey was the inventor of the BLOB, and it first came into existence in the 1970s. Initially, they were big amorphous data chunks.
• The name BLOB existed much before the acronym became what it is today.
• Terry McKiever, an Apollo Marketing person, later felt the need to introduce an acronym. He created the backronym – Basic Large Object. Informix invented an alternative to it later- Binary Large Object.
• The introduced data type and definition of BLOB described data that ingeniously wasn’t defined in traditional computer DB systems.
• Such data was too large to store in the 1970s and 1980s. The data type then became practical after disk space became cheap.
• Starkey, in 1997, explained that BLOB was deployed as an acronym because it was unrecognizable/unprofessional for the market at that time.

Characteristics of BLOB

• It uses data type for storing binary data like images, audio, video, and other multimedia files.
• BLOB requires comparatively larger storage space than all the other data types.
• The database types decide the amount of data that the BLOB stores.
• A BLOB is a large file, typically a sound or image file, that needs to be handled specially (upload, download, or store in a database) because of its size.
• One application that deals with BLOB is the DB storage of large multimedia objects, like television programs and films.

Types of BLOB Storage

• Block BLOBs – These store text or binary files, media files, and documents.
• Append BLOBs – These are the same as Block but optimized for append operations.
• Page BLOBs – These BLOBs have storage up to 1TB. They are more efficient for I/O operations.

Benefits of BLOB

• BLOBs are a commendable alternative to adding large binary files in the databases.
• Their DB backups contain all the stored data.
• BLOBs are very cost-effective, and they save a user’s effort in organizing and storing large files.
• BLOB uses compact databases. Thus, the DB sizes reduce significantly.

Limitations of BLOB

• Not all DBs support BLOBs. They are, thus, not universal in terms of the databases.
• More response time is required when dealing with them.
• The disk space required is also high- making the BLOBs inefficient.
• A user required added overheads to secure the used storage by BLOB.

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