PostgreSQL 9 bytea type problems

The column type was bytea, which is basically a variable length binary string. The problem turned out to be that, for this specific data type (bytea), the output representation of PostgreSQL 9 is different from previous versions. PostgreSQL 9 introduced a new 'hex' format for output, this format is different from the old 'escape' format that older versions of PostgreSQL used to provide. That was the problem, we save data in the database, expect it to be in 'escape' format when retrieved, but we get it in 'hex' format. The solution is rather simple, tell PostgreSQL to return data in the old, familiar 'escape' format. This can be achieved using the following code ALTER DATABASE database\ name SET bytea\ output TO 'escape';