SQL Server 2008 Filestream : Why?
Why would you want to use filestream in SQL Server
2008?
The files you store using filestream in SQL Server 2008 are not accessible
directly using the normal io methods.Instead you have to make a SQL call to get
a pointer which you can then use with normal methods.
So if you have to access SQL anyway why not store the data directly in
SQL in the say a varbinary(max) field?
The answer is performance.
Jim Gray and his colleagues did research into the storing of large data in
the database (SQL2005) versus the file system (NTFS).
To BLOB
or Not To BLOB: Large Object Storage in a Database or a Filesystem,
In this research it showed that storing anything less than 256Kb was better
done in the database, and anything larger than 1M should be stored in the file
system. In between depended on the read/write ratio, and storage age.
So if you need to store data blobs that are > 256Kb (per instance) you
need to consider filestream.
[18/12/2007 Link fixed]
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