[joe_the_user]

Broadly, software is about tradeoffs.

But the relational model is essentially so good an approach that if you are building something that's close to a relational model but not fully relational, you're almost certainly creating more present and future potential problems than if you moved to fully relational model (edit: and that's not saying other approaches are bad if you have a problem a ways away from the relational domain).

Neither of us know the particulars of gp's problem and I so couldn't say if you're alternatives are better tradeoffs. However, I would wager if someone wound-up adding several fields and tables to an existing blob-filled database, the result would haunt it's creator on many lonely nights at the office.