Storing small image files

[Nelson Green <nelsongreen84@xxxxxxxxx>]

Good morning list,

I am designing a system that will have a table for security badges, and we want to store the ID badge photo. These are small files, averaging about 500K in size. We have made the decision to store the image as a BLOB in the table itself for a variety of reasons. However, I am having trouble understanding just how to do that.

The table structures:

CREATE TABLE employee
(
   employee_id                    INTEGER             NOT NULL,
   employee_lastname              VARCHAR(35)         NOT NULL,
   employee_firstname             VARCHAR(35)         NOT NULL,
   employee_mi                    CHAR(1),
   PRIMARY KEY (employee_id)
);

CREATE TABLE security_badge
(
   badge_number                   CHAR(10)            NOT NULL,
   employee_id                    INTEGER             NOT NULL
      REFERENCES employee(employee_id),
   badge_photo                    ????,
   PRIMARY KEY (badge_number)
);

What datatype should I use for the badge_photo (bytea?), and what are the commands to insert the picture accessing the server remotely through psql, and to retrieve the photos as well, please?

Thanks,
Nelson