I am planning to develop a web-application just to test my knowledge on JSP/Servlets. I am planning to create a very simple “Bug tracker” and I am in the process of designing the database. I am using MySql/JDBC.
There are some minor insignificant data like user’s DOB, Date of Joining, list of languages/technologies the user is comfortable with and so on. Is it good to put this information in a seperate table (say “User info”) or put them in a BLOB and serialize the values in them?
Put in other words, in which scenarios BLOB is an appropriate type to use.
If you dont want the users to see the data like DOB, DOJ etc then you can as well put them in a blob and serialize/deseralize them.
General opinion is like if your data is large say like an image or something then go for blob otherwise dont go for it.
General advantages/disadvantages of using blob are mentioned here
http://www.dotnetspark.com/kb/1121-advantages-and-disadvantages-storing-blob.aspx