Okay, great - but for me to understand the different I need to know what serialized data is? Is this a long string of data - containing the content of many fields - that is separated out into it's individual components when it is de-serialised? Sort of like storing an array in its native state?
So instead of having a table with 30 fields you can store the same data in a serialised BLOB?
Like maybe having all the Custom user profile fields in one place - one BLOB?
If so, how do you get at individual parts of a BLOB?