I'm not sure I understand why you can't specify the type in a separate column, rather than prepending it to the blob? That seems like a more flexible way to have access to the information.
Regards, Ketil On 17 Apr 2016 2:02 p.m., "William Drago" <wdrago at verizon.net> wrote: > All, > > Any thoughts on using the first byte of a BLOB to indicate what kind of > data that BLOB contains? > > For example: > 0 = plain old bytes > 1 = 16 bit integers > 2 = 32 bit integers > 3 = singles > 4 = doubles, etc. > > I am forced to consider this approach because my function will be > receiving blobs but will have no idea what those blobs are. However, I can > ask the sender to prepend the blob with an indicator byte to provide the > necessary information. > > In the past I have used comments in the table structure and even used > custom types (e.g. i16BLOB, for a blob that contains 16 bit ints), but in > this case I will not have access to that information. The data is coming to > me in the form of an ADO.NET DataTable which does not contain such > information. > > Of course tagging the blobs like this will increase the size of the > database, but not by much, and if this "feature" is not clearly documented > someone in the future will have a very hard time figuring out why the blobs > don't make sense. > > Is there anything else I should be aware of? > > Thanks, > Bill > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > sqlite-users mailing list > sqlite-users at mailinglists.sqlite.org > http://mailinglists.sqlite.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sqlite-users >
