Large files in a database

My initial thought is that the easiest way to store these images is going to be to use a relational database to store references to each image (a URL) and then simply store the images in a normal file system.

The other important thing to note as well is that there are about 3500 datapoints of floating point numbers to be stored along with each image, and the collection of images and data is expected to grow exponentially. We have been told that the new images that will be added will be larger than the old ones and there will be more of them.

I was talking to someone who is a lecturer in software engineering at my university and he told me that when it comes to large file sizes relational databases are not the best option and that there is another way that you should go. This is a bit of a surprise to me having really only learnt relational database in my degree. What I am wondering is whether or not there is anyone out there who knows anything about the storage of really large volumes of data and if they could point me in the right direction in my research.

Thanks

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