Here is a good reading on the topic: http://research.microsoft.com/research/pubs/view.aspx?msr_tr_id=MSR-TR-2006-45 The biggest problem with storing BLOB in the file system (in the current SQL Server versions) is to guarantee the consistency of the data. For example, if you have to restore your database to a point in time, how to restore all files to that same time mark. And with that approach you store in the database the path to the BLOB file. Then your client applicaiton code can read the location of the BLOB and open it via the client functions to handle BLOB data. SQL Server 2008 will have the new FILESTREAM data type which provides storing BLOB data to the file system while maintaining transactional consistency. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb933993(SQL.100).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb895234(SQL.100).aspx HTH, Plamen Ratchev http://www.SQLStudio.com
