Question

In my web application I am working with files. Some files are very large. I use Response.Write() to write the file to the browser. This goes well for the smaller files, but for large files this can take a while and the bandwidth is fully used.

Is it possible to split large documents and send it piece by piece to the browser? Are there other ways to send the document quicker to the browser?

I hold the document as a property of an object.

Answer 1

Why don’t you compress the file and store it in the DB and decompress it will extracting it?

You can do a lot of things depending on this questions:

1. How often does the file change?

2. Do I really need the files in the DB?

3. Why not store the File path in the
   DB and the File on disk?

Anyhow, since your files are extremely high bandwidth and you would want your app to respond appropriately you might want to use AJAX load the files Asynchronously. You can have a WebHandler .ashx for this.

Here’s a few examples:

http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=193&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

http://www.viawindowslive.com/Articles/VirtualEarth/InvokingserversidecodeusingAJAX.aspx