Question

in my new c#.net 3.5 ASP Website, user have the possibility to upload a picture.

What solution is the best for saving this picture? Should I save it on my server in a folder and save the path in the database, or should I save the picture in the database?

Answer 1

Pro files:

1. There is a simple call to make to serve a file to the response stream. Just set the ContentType appropriately, call that, and you’re done.
2. Its more performant (though this is often overstated, good use of blobs or SQLServer filestreams tends to be pretty performant, but still lose compared to file operations).

Pro DB:

1. Consistency is easier, you can’t have the situation where the file structure and database mismatch.
2. File-based solutions are tricky if you move to a web-farm solution with more than one webserver (above a certain amount of success you will have to do this).
3. Migration of data due to modifications is generally easier. You’re going to have to move the DB data somewhere anyway, so once you’ve solved that you’ve solved it for images too.
4. Manipulation code is easier to write.
5. Reporting on the whole collection of images is easier.