Re: Storing images in SQL database?

RE/
>1) To store everything about the image within the SQL database, and
>the image itself on a file system. A link to the image in the file
>system is also stored within the SQL database.
>
>2) To store the everything, including the image within the database.

When I had to do this, everything I read pointed to #2 as the "good-right-and-holy" path. I even read something to the effect that one should *never* use the file system to store data.....and it all made sense to me.

However, when I tried it, (albeit with an MS JET back end, not a "real" database) performance and DB bloating became an insurmountable problem.

Consequently, under deadline pressure, I reverted to #1.

I experienced no problems with #1 - except for:

1. The nagging knowledge that if the file system were to somehow drop a file, nobody would know until somebody tried to exercise it's pointer.
2. That there seemed TB no way to validate the files short of an off-hours background job that exercised each pointer and reported on errors - in hopes of recovering missing files from backup.

Those two considerations alone would make me think long and hard before doing it that way again.

-- 
PeteCresswell