What are the pros and cons of storing files in a database?

Question

I'm writing a php application and was wondering if it's a bad idea to store complete files in the database. Files should be around 100-200kb mostly text files (txt, doc, docx and so on) or small image files. Or is it just a plain wrong idea?

Answer 1

It really depends on the situation?

• How the files going to be distributed?
• Are the files used standalone or are they part of an system which might have its own authorization and authentication logic?
• Whats your backup strategy?
• Do you need replication?
• Do you need to support a lot of I/O?
• What about caching?

Having said that, I would lean toward some kind of filesystem for documents over a database.