Comment by crazygringo

Sure. But if you have reasonably small files just compress the whole file, like MS Office or EPUB files do.

Or if your files are large and composed of lots of blobs, then compress those blobs individually.

Whereas if your files are large and truly database-y made of tabular data like integers and floats and small strings, then compression isn't really very viable. You usually want speed of lookup, which isn't generally compatible with compression.