SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive

Blob objects

Hello, friends!
I have a question….. I’m building currently a database that have to save Blob objects
(big text documents).
I would like to know what is a better option: to save a links to the objects in the DB or to keep the objects?
Have someone any documents about it? any recommendations?
Thank you very much in advance.

Hi ya, it depends on what you are going to do with the text documents. advantages of BLOBs, it makes disaster recovery easy, since restoring the database will automatically restore the documents to the same consistent state. Security is all done in one place and access is easily controlled via roles/stored procedures/etc. disadvantages, they tend to be slower to save/retrieve than files. They must be retrieved to allow them to be used by most applications, whereas files can be opened directly. Programming languages always seem to struggle with BLOBs. BLOBS are limited to 2GB I’d say that most of the time storing the files as files and using a reference in the database is the way to go, but then there may be reasons why storing as files is better for you Cheers
Twan

I would second Twan on the suggestion to store data as links rather than storing in database. Gaurav
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If you had the space, you could also put an indicator on each file link to signify if file has been copied to a secondary location. Copy all the files to a second location in the same increments as your transactional backups and change the flag. Just an idea. [<img src=’/community/emoticons/emotion-2.gif’ alt=’

‘ />] MeanOldDBA [email protected] When life gives you a lemon, fire the DBA.

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