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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-16T18:41:05+00:00

I have a database which stores .png images as the sql image type. I

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I have a database which stores .png images as the sql “image” type. I have some code which retrieves these images as a byte[], and sends them to the page via the FileContentResult object in .Net. Performance is key in this application, and the images have to be retrieved and displayed as quickly as possible. My question is, can this operation be performed quicker by passing a byte stream from the database to the browser, and not at anytime storing the whole byte array in memory. If this is possible and worthwhile doing, how do I do it?

Here is the code I have so far:

// Get: /Image/Get/5
        public FileResult Get(int id)
        {


            Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.Now.AddSeconds(300));
            Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.Public);
            Response.Cache.SetValidUntilExpires(true);

            // Get full size image by PageId.
            return base.File(page.getFullsizeImage(id), "image/png");
        }

And

public byte[] getFullsizeImage(int pageId)
        {


                    return (from t in tPage
                            // Filter on pageId.
                            where t.PageId == pageId
                            select t.Image).Single().ToArray();


        }

Thanks for any help!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    A nice question.

    Reality is the code required to send the image as a stream is really minimal. It is just Response.Write~~~ byte array and setting the HTTP’s content-type header which must be very fast.

    Now you seem to need to open up your database to the world to get it done quicker. That, being probably possible using features that allow SQL server to serve HTTP/interact with IIS (long time ago I looked at it), not a good idea so I do not believe you should take that risk.

    You are already using the caching so that is cool but files being large, cache gets purged frequently.

    But one thing to do is to have a local File Cache on the IIS and if image is used, it is written to the file on teh web server and from then on (until maybe next day when this is cleared) this other URL (to the static asset) is returned so requests would not have to go through the ASP.NET layer. It is not a great idea but will achieve what you need with least risk.

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