Why someone would storePDF file in a relational database instanse? And how this is even possible? Why not use S3 or Document DB?
Please explain
2 Answers
A PDF would not be stored in RDS, but a link to the object in an S3 bucket may be. A use case would be if a lambda generates a PDF in an S3 bucket and puts a link to its location in DynamoDB so when the backend needs the latest PDF, it can point to the needed S3 object.
Hi Michael,
The question clearly stated the pdf is coming from RDS. The solution does not mention Lambda or S3. I think this question needs to be reworded or otherwise modified. Do you know who I can contact from the support team on that?
Take this with a grain of salt, it’s been a while since I was studying for this.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/UsingObjects.html
Why do it?: I would imagine storing a DESCRIPTION is more secure from an operational perspective rather than originals. It seems like having the blueprint to build the house vs having the house physical house to copy. idk I have never used an object DB a lot of my work is with relational DBsHow is it possible?: By storing the data that describes the file so it can be rebuilt later: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/userguide/upload-objects.html
your answer points to S3. I would store the PDF to S3. But the question in the quiz clearly said RDS. That is what puzzled me. I think the issue might be with the question itself
Keep in mind that a PDF (or any binary) doesn’t have to be stored as such. You could always base64 encode it to store as text. Storing it this way in RDS would reduce the number of calls you’d have to make to get your data. At least that’s my thought of where the question was going.
PDFs could be stored as a BLOB (Binary Large Object) on the Database. Database engines like Oracle and/or MSSQL support this Data Type. This was popular for the legacy on-premise apps to store binary data like pictures, PDFs, etc in the Databases. If such a legacy app, DB and data within a DB were migrated from on-premise into the AWS cloud and AWS RDS, so would be the binary PDFs. Don’t see anything wrong here to be honest.