Where to Store External Application Files
You might be in a situation where other types of files—such as Microsoft Word documents (.doc files), Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (.xls files), images (.jpg or .bmp files), video (.mpeg files), or even sounds (.wav files)–are required to support your application. Where should you store these files when they are necessary to your business application? There are two common methods of storing these files.
Store the files in the file system and reference them in the database.
Store the files in LOB (large object) columns in a database table.
In either case, the goal is to store some of the metadata about these files in the database so that they can be referenced in your application. If you use files instead ...
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