Ideas on storing and retriving files in a Windows Application

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I'm looking for some ideas, I have a project to complete that has a
requirement to store just about ANY type of document. Most common documents
include Word, Excel, HTML, images, pdf, media files, etc. I was thinking of
storing these into SQL Server 2000 as image type but my delimma lays with
retrieval. I was thinking of using a Microsoft Web Browser control to
display the item to the user. This works ok for 2 reasons, 1. The browser
will open the appropiatte application to display the file and 2. I can just
use the Navigate(2) method to display the item. The problem with this I
don't want the requirement of storing the item to a file (filestream) before
displaying (Navigate needs somewhere to go). I was thinking of memoryStream
but I see no good examples (other than image files) on how to do this,
espcially on how to handle large files. Is this a good approach? Or should
I just stick with files stored on the server?

THANKS
 
Ken:

This is probably one of those areas where people on both ends of the
spectrum have some pretty strong feelings - and there's no real way to prove
who's 'right' or 'wrong'. On the side of storing things in the db you have a
few pretty straightforward plusses - 1) All of the data is self contained
in the database so you don't have to worry about people moving/deleting
files etc. 2) Because it is stored in a relational database, getting the
information out of the database is pretty straightforward and while reading
blobs takes some minor modifications other than just using SELECT blah FROM
Whatever - it's still fairly straightforward. I know a lot of folks
discount this latter part as being more purist than practical, I think it's
definitely an important thing to consider. (FYI, I seem to recall reading
that Longhorn is going to implement Searches of the file system via a
relational database which depending on your perspective is validation of
it's practicality and usefulness or proof that it's an overly complex
overengineered solutino). I think there are a few others but they can
probably all be rolled into one big one - namely you are treating the file
information in the same manner as you are other data in the application so
it provides a clean logical fit and you can handle backup/restore/security
in the same way.

On the other hand, you have performance. The internet is littered with
horror stories of people who started storing BLOB data in a db only to have
it slow down so much that it actually started moving backward. Similary,
other database maintenance became a complete nightmare and scaling the
systme upward become more difficult. Some of this is no doubt due to poor
implementations - but I think all in all, there's somethign to this. Now,
if your blobs are small and there sin't a lot of other data in the db etc
etc all of this is mitigated to a large degree. But even if it's the case
now, unless you are sure that it won't change, you run a risk of getting
bittne by it. I've went down the blob road and liked many things about it
but found the overall cost a little more expensive then the value it
produced. Eventually opted for storing file paths in the db and not had too
many regrets about it.

HTH,

Bill
--
W.G. Ryan MVP Windows - Embedded

Have an opinion on the effectiveness of Microsoft Embedded newsgroups?
Let Microsoft know!
https://www.windowsembeddedeval.com/community/newsgroups
 
Wow!!! I wasn't expecting such a large response, I think you touched on just
about everything floating around in my mind. I think I have my mind made up
to use the file system becuase I too have read alot about Yukon so I'm
excited about getting the release. But before I jump to using the file
system I was wanting to know how I would load and display other file types
(non image) from a database. Basically if I stored a word doc, or a pdf, or
a media file, I know how to retrieve the data back from the database but I
don't know how to display it to the user WITHOUT first writing the file to
the client. Any ideas?

THANKS

William Ryan eMVP said:
Ken:

This is probably one of those areas where people on both ends of the
spectrum have some pretty strong feelings - and there's no real way to prove
who's 'right' or 'wrong'. On the side of storing things in the db you have a
few pretty straightforward plusses - 1) All of the data is self contained
in the database so you don't have to worry about people moving/deleting
files etc. 2) Because it is stored in a relational database, getting the
information out of the database is pretty straightforward and while reading
blobs takes some minor modifications other than just using SELECT blah FROM
Whatever - it's still fairly straightforward. I know a lot of folks
discount this latter part as being more purist than practical, I think it's
definitely an important thing to consider. (FYI, I seem to recall reading
that Longhorn is going to implement Searches of the file system via a
relational database which depending on your perspective is validation of
it's practicality and usefulness or proof that it's an overly complex
overengineered solutino). I think there are a few others but they can
probably all be rolled into one big one - namely you are treating the file
information in the same manner as you are other data in the application so
it provides a clean logical fit and you can handle backup/restore/security
in the same way.

On the other hand, you have performance. The internet is littered with
horror stories of people who started storing BLOB data in a db only to have
it slow down so much that it actually started moving backward. Similary,
other database maintenance became a complete nightmare and scaling the
systme upward become more difficult. Some of this is no doubt due to poor
implementations - but I think all in all, there's somethign to this. Now,
if your blobs are small and there sin't a lot of other data in the db etc
etc all of this is mitigated to a large degree. But even if it's the case
now, unless you are sure that it won't change, you run a risk of getting
bittne by it. I've went down the blob road and liked many things about it
but found the overall cost a little more expensive then the value it
produced. Eventually opted for storing file paths in the db and not had too
many regrets about it.

HTH,

Bill
--
W.G. Ryan MVP Windows - Embedded

Have an opinion on the effectiveness of Microsoft Embedded newsgroups?
Let Microsoft know!
https://www.windowsembeddedeval.com/community/newsgroups
Click to expand...
 
Back
Top