Storing protobuf in the database

Discussing a schema design at work, and what my senior coworker wants to do is this: we have an API definition for the messages we receive over gRPC:

message Message {
    int32 id = 1;
    string message = 2;
    google.protobuf.Timestamp timestamp = 3;
    string username = 4;
    // several other fields, which would be annoying to map
}

message Message {
    int32 id = 1;
    string message = 2;
    google.protobuf.Timestamp timestamp = 3;
    string username = 4;
    // several other fields, which would be annoying to map
}

they want to create the schema like this:

CREATE TABLE messages (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    timestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
    message_proto BYTEA
);

CREATE TABLE messages (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    timestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
    message_proto BYTEA
);

where we store some fields for searching and indexing but otherwise just dump the proto we receive. I don't really like this because I don't think it's extensible (what if the customer wants to filter on username later), but I'm curious what wider opinions are

C#•7mo ago•

42 replies

dreadfullydistinct

Storing protobuf in the database

Discussing a schema design at work, and what my senior coworker wants to do is this: we have an API definition for the messages we receive over gRPC:

message Message {
    int32 id = 1;
    string message = 2;
    google.protobuf.Timestamp timestamp = 3;
    string username = 4;
    // several other fields, which would be annoying to map
}

message Message {
    int32 id = 1;
    string message = 2;
    google.protobuf.Timestamp timestamp = 3;
    string username = 4;
    // several other fields, which would be annoying to map
}

they want to create the schema like this:

CREATE TABLE messages (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    timestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
    message_proto BYTEA
);

CREATE TABLE messages (
    id SERIAL PRIMARY KEY,
    timestamp TIMESTAMP NOT NULL,
    message_proto BYTEA
);

Storing protobuf in the database

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