RE: FN-FORUM: Databases (again)

date posted 1st August 2003 15:51

Hi Grant,

The concensus of the list seems to have been that you wouldnt actually put
the streaming media into a database. Instead you use the database to look up
the location of where the media is stored.

And that the media would just be stored on a file server or a media server.
(which may or may not be the database server)

so our db table called media_locations might look like

index | author | track | media_location
-----------------------------------------------------------------
01 david http blues http://myserver.net/david_1.mp3
02 grant db blues http://myserver.net/grant_1.mp3

you would write a query in SQL (structured query language) to interogate the
database.

so

"select media_location from media_locations where author like 'david' and
track like 'http blues'"

would return

"http://myserver.net/david 1.mps"

and so on. basically this is very simple stuff, and **any** database could
handle it. (in fact you could do it using flat text files, but lets not go
there)

so to go into an interview situation and try and justify using say MSSQL at
the expense of MySQL or Oracle would be... er.. ill advised.

alternatively you seem to want to put the media into your database. so you
would have

index | author | track | media_file
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
01 david http blues "FCR%Y$"VB£^U%*&kalfjd!"£!"£"%$£^%$ ....."
02 grant db blues "ADdSAG&"£FDS"£^&$HTYG$£"RF£"!$£"$d ....."

i have done something similiar using blob fields in MSSQL, and there are
advantages to doing it this way, but for ease of implementation i would
strongly recommend that you use the first solution.

also if you try googling database and streaming media or RDBMS and streaming
media you will get lots of hits.

try
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=%22RDBMS%22+%2B%22strea
ming+media%22&btnG=Google+Search

there looks like a few hits to people who offers solutions.

hth. and i have been **too** patronising.






david.




-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL REMOVED] [EMAIL REMOVED] Behalf Of
gtstream
Sent: 01 August 2003 15:26
To: FN-FORUM / [EMAIL REMOVED]
Subject: FN-FORUM: Databases (again)



Hi all

Just asking the same question again - anyone know of a resource that gives a
quick description of the more commonly used database types and their pros
and cons? If it's relevant, the database will hypothetically be used to
access streaming media files. I need to do the research for a job I'm going
for, where I need an awareness of databases (at present, I'm aware of them,
but that's about it! It would be good if I could go to the interview with a
little knowledge...)

Regards

Grant