A binary large object, also known as a blob, is a collection of binary data stored as a single entity in a database management system. Blobs are typically images, audio or other multimedia objects, though sometimes binary executable code is stored as a blob. Database support for blobs is not universal.
Blobs were originally just amorphous chunks of data invented by Jim Starkey at DEC, who describes them as "the thing that ate Cincinnati, Cleveland, or whatever".[1] Later, Terry McKiever, a marketing person for Apollo felt that it needed to be an acronym and invented the backronymBasic Large Object. Then Informix invented an alternative backronym, Binary Large Objectcitation needed. Today many people believe that blob was originally intended as an acronym for something.
The data type and definition was introduced to describe data not originally defined in traditional computer database systems but became possible when disk space became cheap.
