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Software Engineering Flashcard

What is the difference between bytea and text for storing files in PostgreSQL?

Concepts Deckdatabase Tags
  • database

Question

What is the difference between bytea and text for storing files in PostgreSQL?

Answer

bytea stores raw bytes (no encoding assumptions). text stores character data (UTF-8 validated). For plain text files, text is the natural choice (no encoding overhead, string operations for free). For binary files, bytea (same storage size as the original file). Both use TOAST with the same 1 GB / 4 billion limits.