Question

For a (.net) web application I need to allow users to store many documents (pdf, .docx etc.).
My first thoughts were to save all the documents as a BLOB in a SQL (Express) database.

But how will my database grow? Is it better to save all the documents into the file system?

Personally I still think that I’m better of saving the documents into the database, because of performance. But I’m not sure and curious what you folks think.

Edit – My conclusion: If the file size is less then 1Mb and/or the file is rarely edited you should store the file in SQL server, because of the performance. If the file will be edited a lot and/or is greater then 1Mb you should store your file into the file system.
With many thanks to a_horse_with_no_name 😉

Answer 1

Whether BLOBs in the database are slower or faster than native filesystem, depends on the size of the BLOBs.

This article from Microsoft might be interesting for you:

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=64525