Andrew Maclean wrote:
> Can't we have a data type called say "image" that is just a
> representation of the bytes and nothing else?
> It seems to me that bytea is a hangover from the old days
>
um, thats what BYTEA is.
> Is there some underlying physical reason why postgresql and other
> databases cannot handle binary data without going through all this
> silly escape stuff which must have a massive impact on performance. Or
> is it just because databases originally were built to handle just test
> data?
>
thats all in the API's you use to access the database. you can pass in
binary data directly without escaping if your API bindings support
parameterized calls, like pqExecParams()