Storing images and pdf files in SQL Server 2000
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We are in the process of creating a new web app application and web service that allow many users to create their own sites using our templates. We are trying to determine the best method of storing images used on those sites, images for photo galleries, and pdf files. In doing research, I have found advantages and disadvantages of storing the binary data in the database as opposed to storing the filename in the database as a pointer to a file. Does anyone have any experience with this or recommendations for the best method of saving those files? I would appreciate any input. Thanks.
Wendy Schuman -
We have an imaging systems from Hyland Software.
They store the images (mostly .tif) on disk and go with the pointers. We have close to 750GB of images and the DB itself is over 8GB.
I highly recomend that you do external files. A lot less of a mess IMHO.
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Jim P.A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.
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There is one recommendation: if you select to store images as external files and you will distribute your application to other organizations do not forget to advise them what directories have to be backed up on the regular basis or moved when moving a database to another server. Also provide a way to change the server and directories name. Do not implement it as a share. I have one app where the attachments directory is configured as a share and a share name is configured in the database as an absolute path. We always have to watch when copying a database to the development server that this path is changed so our development database application would not use the production share.
Yelena
Regards,Yelena Varsha
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We also conducted reseach as to where the best place to store images/documents. Our orignal plan was to store the images in the file system and use Availl to replicate the images through the firewall. We were having difficulty getting this to work properly, so opted for Plan B, storing the images in sql server. We were using sql server replication anyway, so this solution worked. We did begin having trouble storing images larger than 90 mb. A support call to Microsoft helped us work through these issues.
That being said, we have finally been able to get the file replication working through he firewall and will begin using this methodology. We will just keep pointers to the files in the database, back to plan A.
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