Storing word documents

Question

I'm working on job site (using asp.net 3.5) in which a user can upload one or more resumes. Database is sql server 2005. Whats the recommendation regarding storage of these documents? Shall i store it as a blob in the database or just store the path in database and keep the document in the physical folder? Can someone please mention the pros and cons of each wrt performance and scalability?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Storing files in the database gives you:

(+) easier house-keeping, no orphaned files on the disk

(+) consistent programming and access model (authorization)

(-) Database grows exorbitantly, which will increase backup time and disk space use to hold backup files

I don't think that either option scales better than the other. If you expect very large numbers of documents, you will hit limits regarding the number of files in a directory (either as an absolute limit, or because directory lookups begin to perform very poorly at a certain point).